West Palm Beach, Fla. – Remember that colorful, palm-sized cube you bought in the early ’80s and is now in the back of your closet? Unless you smashed it against a wall in frustration.
Well, get ready for a resurgence of the Rubik’s Cube, thanks to its prominent product placement in the new Will Smith movie, “The Pursuit of Happyness,” which opened nationwide last weekend.
In the film, single dad Smith solves the Cube in seconds to impress a stockbroker and gain entry to an intern program. But first, someone had to teach Smith all the right moves.
Enter Tyson Mao, 22, a San Francisco Bay area sourcing consultant, the co-founder of the World Cube Association and holder of the world’s record for solving the Cube – blindfolded.
He was the logical go-to guy, who showed Smith how to get all the colored sides to match in less than 10 hours of instruction.
But if you want to learn just to impress your friends, Mao can teach you in a lot less time.
Typically, he says, “After an hour and a half, (people) can solve the Rubik’s Cube with a sheet of instructions on it, without any input from me. After 10 hours, Will Smith was able to solve the Rubik’s Cube on his own, without anything. Not only learning the process, but committing it to memory.”
Initially, Mao was enlisted to help fake Smith’s manipulation of the Cube. “The first thought was that we could get a hand double,” says Mao. “It turns out that, first of all, Will Smith didn’t want that.
“Second of all, there aren’t that many people who have his size hands; are African-American; and can solve the Cube,” says Mao, quickly adding, “I’m sure that number will increase after this movie comes out.”
And no, the Cube was not rigged, not preset for the film scene, to make Smith’s chore easier.
Mao gives his movie-star pupil high marks for Cube aptitude. “He was a very quick learner. He seemed to have a very intuitive understanding for how the pieces move around the Cube. A lot of times, people can’t even see one move ahead. They want to put one sticker next to another and they turn the wrong thing. It’s not a matter of intelligence; it’s just easier for some people to see these things.”
Mao learned to solve the Cube three years ago, when he was taught by his younger brother, a Rubik’s competition champion. He firmly believes that solving it does not require great mental powers.
“Patience is probably far more important; patience and determination,” he says. “Anyone can solve the Rubik’s Cube.”
OK, but can you give us some hints of what you taught Smith?
“One of the biggest pitfalls for people is, they see the Rubik’s Cube as six faces with nine stickers on each face,” he responds. “It is true, but it’s not exactly what’s going on. Each of these stickers is actually connected to a physical piece of plastic. In other words, you can’t move these stickers all independently of each other. So you’re not solving stickers; you’re solving pieces. And if you use the center as a guide, you can figure out which piece belongs exactly in which location.
“Basically, what you’re doing is solving it in parts. You’re breaking this large problem down to smaller problems,” says Mao,. “The first thing that you try to do is, you try to solve four edge pieces on one face.
“It doesn’t matter what color you start with. You solve four pieces on, say, the white face and then after you get the edge pieces, that allows you to get the corner pieces on that same white face.
“If you get the corner pieces, you’ve gotten the entire white face and all the pieces around it. Then what you would try to do is fill in four middle slots, and there’s another move that allows you to do that.”
Got it? Now go find your Rubik’s Cube and give it a try.
