Friday, September 05, 2008

"Bradley Rubik"

Prepare yourself to be rocked to the core by the amazing Bradley:



Mastering "the cube" is a favorite pastime of my former students (and I confiscated many of them in my days at the Korean school). Bradley, though, has to be the best I've seen. Watch again his spider-like fingers spin a web around its prey as he manipulates this puzzle.

It must have been the added pressure of his teacher filming him solve the cube (or the intimidating faces I made to break his focus while masterfully scrambling it for him) because he was very disappointed with his time: 27 seconds. His best is 0:15, so 0:27 is quite laughable.

A few days earlier, I saw him practicing with his friends with a blindfold on. Yes my friends, he not only memorized all the colors of the scrambled cube, but remembered the new combination of colors with every twist (though it took significantly longer- 8 minutes). Unfortunately, he mixed up a few squares along the way, so when he removed his blindfold, the colors were still off. Most of us, I bet, struggle to solve a Rubik's cube... with our eyes open... in any amount of time.

Kudos to Bradley for being so algorithmically bombastic.

3 comments:

liso. said...

Okay, had I ever been able to complete a rubix, I may be slightly impressed. But as is, I am TOTALLY BLOWN AWAY! Skills.

Karrot Soup said...

Wow wow wow. That really is amazing. And I HAVE solved a cube, but can generally do it in 4 or 5 minutes. (Of course, mine is missing a few stickers at this point which I've had to memorize and it takes some real force to turn some of the faces. We have kids in our house who abuse toys...) Great use of the word bombastic, also. And a shout-out to Tiff in the background, whose shirt perfectly coordinates with Bradley's.

Marilyn said...

That's amazing. I can't even do it at all. Hey Tiff, how about blogging some pics of your trips and your new home in Calif? Can't wait to see pics of the kids in Disneland.