Ernő Rubik

The native form of this personal name is Rubik Ernő. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

Ernő Rubik (born July 13, 1944) is a Hungarian inventor, sculptor and professor of architecture. He is best known for the invention of mechanical puzzles including Rubik's Cube, Rubik's Magic and Rubik's Snake.

Biography

Ernő Rubik was born in Budapest, Hungary during World War II. His father was a flight engineer at the Esztergom airplane factory, his mother a poet. He graduated from the Technical University, Budapest (Műszaki Egyetem) in 1967 as an architectural engineer and began postgraduate studies in sculpting and interior architecture. From 1971 to 1975 he worked as an architect, then went back to academia and became professor at the Budapest College of Applied Arts (Iparművészeti Főiskola).He has spent all his life in Hungary.

"Space always intrigued me, with its incredibly rich possibilities, space alteration by (architectural) objects, objects transformation in space (sculpture, design), movement in space and in time, their correlation, their repercussion on mankind, the relation between man and space, the object and time. I think the CUBE arose from this interest, from this search for expression and for this always more increased acuteness of these thoughts..."

In the early 1980s, he became editor of a game and puzzle journal called ...És játék ("...and games"), then became self-employed in 1983, founding the Rubik Stúdió, where he designed furniture and games. In 1987 he became professor with full tenure; in 1990 he became the president of the Hungarian Engineering Academy (Magyar Mérnöki Akadémia). At the Academy, he created the International Rubik Foundation to support especially talented young engineers and industrial designers.

Presently he is mainly working on video game development and architectural topics and is still leading the Rubik Studios.

He is known to be a very introverted and hardly accessible person, almost impossible to contact or get for autographs. He typically refuses to attend speedcubing events. However, he is slated to attend the 2007 World Championship in Budapest.

Rubik's puzzles and games

Ernő Rubik's most famous puzzle, the Rubik's Cube

Below is a list of some of the puzzles released under the "Rubik" brand name.

Cube-like puzzles

• Rubik's Cube
• Pocket Cube or Mini-Cube (2×2×2 version of the cube)
• Domino Cube (2x3x3 version of the cube, white and black, two sides are marked with dots of domino)
• Rubik's Revenge (4×4×4 version of the cube)
• Professor's Cube (5×5×5 version of the cube)
• Rubik's Soma Puzzle, aka Rubik's Mini-Bricks (a variation of Piet Hein's Soma Cube: a set of different shaped bricks that can be assembled into different shapes - aim is to construct a cube)

Other classic puzzles

• Rubik's Magic
• Rubik's Clock
• Rubik's Snake, also known as Rubik's Twist (composed of 24 wedges that can be arranged to form different shapes)

The 90s collection

• Rubik's Triamid
• Rubik's Tangle (a series of jigsaw-type puzzles, with square pieces; the aim is to create a tangle of ropes that join end to end)
• Rubik's Dice
• Rubik's XV
• Rubik's Games PC Video Game released in 1999 A collection of 5 mini games. Concepts of each by listed below.
  
  1. Rubik's Classic by Erno Rubik.
  2. Cover Up by Erno Rubik.
  3. Play Ground by Roland Schon.
  4. Zigthrough by Laszlo Mero and Laszlo Zsiga.
  5. Paint War by Tom Kremer.

Other puzzles

• Rubik's Double Tangram
• Rubik's Maze
• Rubik's Rabbits
• Rubik's Rings
• Rubik's Royal Brain Teaser
  • 440 piece jigsaw puzzle
• Rubik's Shells
• Rubik's UFO
• Zigzaw (a jigsaw puzzle)

Multi-player games

• Rubik's Brain Game
  • Two-player game;
  • One player acts as the "Codemaster", creating a hidden pattern; the other player has to guess this in as few turns as possible;
  • Similar principle to Mastermind.
• Rubik's Challenge aka Rubik's Game
  • Cube-shaped game
  • Two to six players
• Rubik's Checkers Challenge
  • Two-player abstract strategy board game;
  • Game of checkers with a twist.
  • Each piece begins with the full power of a King, moving diagonally forwards and backwards and jumping captures as in regular checkers.
  • Upon a first capture a piece is flipped over to the pawn-side with its movement then reduced to a backwards direction only. A second capture of the same piece removes it from the game.
• Rubik's Eclipse
  • Two-player abstract strategy board game;
  • Possibly a re-presentation of the Magic Strategy Game with different designs for the playing pieces;
  • Tagline - "Easy to learn, a challenge to win."

Rubik's Illusion game board

• Rubik's Illusion
  • Two-player abstract strategy board game;
  • the board is constructed as eight playing spaces wide, by four real playing spaces deep, with a mirror at the far edge of the board making the total depth of play eight spaces.
  • The game is played with 5 red pieces, 5 yellow pieces and 10 mixed colour pieces whose reflection appears to be the opposite colour. The goal is to make a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line of 5 pieces of the player's colour.
• Rubik's Infinity
  • Two-player abstract strategy board game;
  • each player has marbles of a certain colour;
  • the aim is to make as many rows of four marbles as possible whilst preventing your opponent from doing the same;
  • Tagline - "Move one ball to change it all. The more you score four, the faster you win. Easy to learn, a challenge to master."
• Rubik's Line Up
• Rubik's Magic Strategy Game
  • Two-player abstract strategy board game
• Rubik's Race
  • two player game
  • each player has a five by five sliding puzzle
  • the object is to make the central three by three square into a certain pattern.
• Rubik's Tac Toe
  • Two-player abstract strategy board game;
  • Possibly another re-presentation of the Magic Strategy Game with different designs for the playing pieces;

External links

• Official website
• An interview with Ernő Rubik
• His biography at Hungary.hu in Hungarian
• Rubik's dedicated site
• Rubik's Cube. Algorithms, compositions, visual simulator