Since I was a kid, I’ve been building up a collection of Rubik’s cubes. This is not that special.  Lots of people collect Rubik’s cubes. The difference is that I don’t actually know how to solve a Rubik’s cube.

When I was younger, I definitely seemed like the kind of kid who would enjoy Rubik’s Cubes. I was (and in fact still am) a big math nerd who liked brainteasers with deep strategy. So my friends and family were in fact correct that I enjoyed Rubik’s Cubes as a concept in the abstract. There’s a lot of cool math in there, like how every scramble of a regular Rubik’s cube can be solved in 20 moves or less. I just didn’t actually know how to solve one if I was not reading a tutorial at that exact moment.

I have five of these Rubik’s cubes on the shelf at my parents’ place. There’s at least one normal 3x3x3 Rubik’s cube in my collection, too, but it’s not on display.

The 5x5x5 “Rubik’s Professor” is the first one of these that I received. One of my sister’s friends solved the orange side years ago. Since then, some of the colored stickers have peeled off and I haven’t replaced them, which technically means it’s unsolvable (until someone fixes it, of course). It does look really cool, though.

The 4x4x4 “Rubik’s revenge” was one of the more recent additions, as is the 2x2x2 key chain cube. The 4x4x4 is solved right now; this probably means either someone else solved this one for me, or else I solved it while looking at the instructions. I actually fidget with the key chain one, but I can only reliably solve a couple faces at a time.

My friends who actually know how to solve wacky cube puzzles have told me that you don’t need to learn any new algorithms for differently sized regular cubes. You can just treat the edge pieces of a 4x4x4 cube the same way you treat the edge pieces on a regular 3x3x3 cube. This makes a lot of sense to me. The math behind the puzzles – like group theory – describes why this would happen.

Of course, since I don’t know how to solve a regular cube, that doesn’t help me. But I ever decide to actually learn, I guess I’ll be well prepared.

The gear cube introduces a new challenge. In addition to needing each middle, edge, and corner piece to be in the correct position, they also need to be in the correct orientation. Because of the gears, rotating one face rotates many more faces. There are probably good instructions for this one, too, but I think I’ve just tried to leave it unscrambled since I got it as a gift.

The “Rubik’s Revolution” is the 3x3x3 with the holes in the middle. That one actually doesn’t turn like a normal Rubik’s cube. Instead, it’s more like a cube-shaped version of the game Simon, where you press glowing buttons in specific patterns to solve a puzzle. Here, the colored buttons are inset into the center of each face. I still count this as a Rubik’s cube that I can’t solve, since I think the games you can play are open ended – you try to set a high score before you lose.

There are some very impressive Rubik’s Cube style puzzles out there, generally called “twisty puzzles” or “combination puzzles”. There are ones with all sorts of weird shapes and patterns and other quirks. My collection isn’t anywhere close to representing the entire array of these puzzles, but I still like the ones I have. Maybe one day, I’ll even learn how to solve them all.

Coming soon: Treating Factorio Withdrawal