Impossible Rubik's Cubes
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- čas přidán 20. 12. 2017
- Do check out the puzzles over on Brilliant!
brilliant.org/standupmaths
Use the URL above to help support this video and get 20% off the paid premium versions.
Here is the second video with even more impossible cubes:
• More Impossible Rubik'...
If you now feel the need to own a Rubik’s cubes, head over to Maths Gear. Other cube shops are available. Also, did I mention brilliant.org?
mathsgear.co.uk/collections/r...
Beginner’s guide to solving a Rubik’s Cube.
think-maths.co.uk/downloads/ru...
Shout-out to the cubers subreddit. They love this stuff.
/ cubers
CORRECTIONS
- Annoyingly the video is interlaced. I spotted that after I’d finished filming and it was too late to fix it. It hurts me as much as it hurts you.
- Let me know if you spot anything else!
Thanks to my Patreon supporters who made this possible. Here is a random subset:
Jarod Boyd
Mitchell Reid
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Support my channel and I can make more videos:
/ standupmaths
Music by Howard Carter
Filming and editing by Matt Parker
Design by Simon Wright
MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician
Website: standupmaths.com/
Maths book: makeanddo4D.com/
Nerdy maths toys: mathsgear.co.uk/ - Zábava
The cube on your shirt isn't melting; it's being (dis)solved.
Datenegassie hahaha I got the pun😂
Dissolving due to its unsolvable state.
Get out
Oh haha
CH.A.O.S TV I'm so proud of you.
There are also two identical center pieces on the cufflinks.
Yeah, I can't believe he missed that!
...and on the Atari Age cover as well.
Damnit you beat me to it :)
i was going to say the same thing. can't have 2 white centers
right?
"no way I would damage my original packaging rubik's cube!" *drops it on the table*
Yeah, that hurt.
I'm sure the manufacturer knew their product would inevitably be dropped a few times, not to mention hurled across rooms in frustration. Hopefully they built them appropriately sturdy.
@@Duncan_Idaho_Potato The cube? Yes.
The box? Not quite so much.
Nearly gave me a heart attack when you almost opened that box
Then he dropped it
Your original unopened cube is actually a Schroedinger's Cube and it's in a superposition of all possible states until you open the box. Stay tuned for my thesis on cubic entanglement where changing the state of one cube affects its entangled pair buried at the bottom of your childhood toy box.
tool462 wow...
Well done!
Sounds like a good read!
tool462 This is basically how to take something simple and make it look complicated
You fun knee
3:16 also right there you can see two white centers smh
I noticed that before he pointed out the other error. I scrolled down to see how many other people noticed that lol.
I had an original Rubik's Cube back in the 80's. It became gummed up with my tears because I couldn't solve it.
Threedog1963 that’s sad
I still can't solve mine it's been solved like five times but I had a guide and I lost that so it's just sitting on my shelf
the thing that annoys cubers more than impossible rubik's cubes is...
*rubix*
*NICE RUBRICKX*
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
My frind kän solf a rubberiks kup inn laik feif säkendz.
kappa
I agree 100%
What about Rubic's?
Impossible Rubik’s cubes should be called Parker cubes.
Things cubers hate:
4. People spelling Rubik's as rubix
Sam M omfg 😩😩😩😩 I usually explain the whole Ernö Rubik thing to try and help correct their misuse
Do you mean Rubix cubers
@@obiz0561 thats a joke, right?
Rubicks Kube
Nah, it's rubi'x cube
The picture of the cube shown on the Atari Age cover is not impossible. In the game, you are not solving a Rubik's Cube. A move in the game is done by swapping the color of the "runner" with the color of the space he is on. The object is to get the nine spots on all six cube faces the be the same color in the fewest swaps possible. Since you are performing color swaps, not rotating pieces, any color combination is possible.
I feel like if someone asked me to design any of these products, I would immediately get a regular Rubik's cube, mess it up and use it as a reference for the design... I mean someone had to choose where to put the colors on these things and that seems like a much more tedious task than just copying. Maybe it's a copyright thing
Boredness Copywite would make sense.
Some of the "prettiness" of the Rubik's cube in design is the variety of colors. A simply scrambled cube might not feel "colorful" or pretty enough for the art designer.
Has anyone worked out what the "prettiest" scramble is? Think of the factors: it can't be partially solved, or look too regular, but too random might also feel discordant and look ugly.
(It's also likely that someone doing that research will try to copyright the results.)
To even think to do that, you'd first need to realize that there are restrictions on how the stickers can move, and that's simply not obvious on first encountering this puzzle.
Melinda Green well once you understand the cube you can do anything, with just basic begginer algorithms I can make any pattern I want
Even knowing what cube algorithms are is a lot of information. You probably don't remember what it was like to not know anything about it.
A lot of them had two of the same centers too
Speedcubing Nerd 2 of them. Not really "a lot"
Broken Wave 2/5 40%. That's a lot.
TheJollyLoli nah. So if I got 40% on a test that’s a lot? Nah that’s a trash score
@@thunderninja9819 But if 2/5 of a population does that's a lot
"Too many oranges!!" -- Matt Parker 2017
And not enough grapefruit.
Pierre Abbat
Oh wow, I found an apple.
Im a farmer, want some more grapefruits for oranges?
Guhan s a
Guhan s 7.8/10 too many oranges
Is it possible it's to try and prevent accusations of trademark infringement?
Mr. Rubik could sue companies for using his trademark without permission. Then whoever makes the shirts can say it's not a rubik's cube because it's not a valid configuration of a rubik.
non Rubik's brand cubes have a slightly different color scheme that allows them to avoid copyright, these examples could do the same
I'm guessing you posted this before watching to the end and seeing that the original company also made the same mistake. Turns out graphics design people aren't necessarily the same people as Rubik's solvers.
Unless you're saying that the colors are tinted differently, you're wrong, its almost always the same order of colors
@kapik k
@@piethedye3948 is correct about the color scheme. White/Yellow, Red/Orange, Blue/Green is standard. You can get others, obviously, but the companies that make them also make standard ones.
7:53 You almost gave me a heart attack.
Wanted to write exactly the same!
^ This
^ that
I was about to comment "Does this guy have too much money to waste or something?"
^^ those
@2:58 2 white centers....
^ this
^ that
^ the other
Finally. I've been waiting for that response for a solid 48 minutes.
Parker sq
*urge to comment about parker cubes intensifies*
Streak? DanG? NLSS Crew? You guys infest everything. :P
Let's
damn you matt! I thought you were gonna reveal how the belt wasn't solvable so I spent half an hour trying to figure out why, including solving my cube (with pink stickers to match!) to your belt buckle, and.. I was confused when I was successful. then I unpaused the video, and you said "but mine is solvable!" NOOO
2:48 "theres simply too many oranges" - standupmaths the fruit hater LOL
The cufflinks at 3:00 has 2 middle white pieces
Also impossible
Though I was the only one how noticed
5:36 there are also two red (orange) center pieces
1:07 obviously, it lack one side completely, and lacks one additional centerpiece... AND it's hollow!
Svante Bengtson lol
Svante Bengtson
Hollow... Reminds me of void cubes.
Not just that, if you look closely you can see that the pieces are fixed together. You can't even turn it!
I love seeing Matt getting so excited over these things, makes me feel less weird when I do it myself
Im so happy to see you telling these problem we cuber face, like only cuber understand cubers, it just trigger me sometime that non-cubers say stuff that they don't even understand about
Why is it apparently so hard to GET a rubik code, rearrange it, then use that as the basis for the image/model/t-shirt whatever.? Lazy people! tut tut
You don't even have to buy one, you can just use an online rubik's cube.
Alex Watson I think the problem is that people don't even realize that there's positions that aren't solve able.
Maybe people don't understand some of the more specific unsolvable variations, but if there's 11 orange stickers? C'mon.
Because the people that design t-shirts/logos don't know how Rubik's cubes work. Or maybe it's to avoid copyright infringement.
Alex Watson Easier still, a designer could get a real life Rubik's cube, jumble it into a nice, random-looking configuration, and use it as a model.
The reason for these discrepancies is simple: The guys doing design, have little or no connection with the math wiz guys behind them. So the company making the design of the original packaging, probably were told: Make a cube on the box, and they just coloured as they saw fit never thinking of the math behind. Same with all the other designs.
But it makes for fun videos though. :D
But you don't even have to think about the math at all! Just get a Rubiks Cube, scramble it however you like and then base your design on that.
No one connected with these products cares about these products. What they saw was a bunch of kids and sometimes adults who use it as symbol of intelligence and they capitalized on it.
Haha, you say that But I've done a rubiks cube graphic and made it wrong intentionally, basically because I know people enjoy seeing it wrong.
The sad thing is I bet some nerd brought it to the designer's attention, and instead of being thanked and fixing the design, they were probably reprimanded. Of course it won't hurt sales, and yes it still matters.
Um.... duh? Lol
I think you'd enjoy fewest move challenge since you like the big brain puzzle solving aspect more than the Speedy aspect
Love these rubiks cube videos 👍🏼
I thought point #3 would be misspellings of the word Rubik's
Don't you mean *rubix* ?
Ali161102 Actually it’s rubrik’s
Erick Lescano Nice rubric
Woah. Is that a 10x10?
Rubirxr's™
Interlacing problem?
That was the first thing I thought.
Parker deinterlacing
it's a rubik's cube video
It only happens for me if I'm not viewing the video fullscreen, so no idea what's going on there.
d2factotum same for me.
When you brought those scissors close to that gold tape gave me some serious anxiety! Lol you got me with that one, well done!
I know what it feels like to get a impossible Rubik's cube. So, my dad went to Budapest Hungary and brought a really nice metal picture of a cube. When he got home he got it out and I asked if it was on sale. He's like why? I replied "look There is two white center pieces! To this day it hanging on my wall and a great memory of him.
I am currently wearing a Rubik's cube t-shirt and I've spotted 5 mistakes lol. Good video btw 👌 👍
I'm so happy to hear you rock a Valk3 like me. They really are amongst the top three cubes on the market.
Nice Thunderclap, too.
Valk3 is amazing
Wait top 3? my friend got one for me and him for our birthdays. Anyways i have been cubing for 1-2 years and i only started getting sub- 40 using the valk 3
I use yuxin little magic M and Gan X
When you went to open the original Rubiks cube I litteraly yelled "NOnonono!" at my screen. I'm SO glad you reacted the way you did. :')
I was given a 7x7x7cube as a stocking stuffer for christmas. Solved it twice while I had time off. Already got used to 3x3x3 and the 4x4x4, but this...took me all day. Parity algorithms get me every time still. I prefer the worst method for solving it though, building up three sides perfectly from a corner. Fixing the other three sides on the 7x7x7 was a fun challenge!
Matt, there's a challenge I've been thinking about for sometime.
It's so obvious that's impossible no one else has thought something like this already.
I call it The Scramble Challenge.
Considering that in a Rubik's Cube any scrambled state is a unique solved state, then I start with a "regular" solved state (all tiles with same color on every face) and try as fast as possible to reach a known scrambled state (made by other person on other cube, for example), exactly as you did to compare the card with your real cube.
What you think about this challenge?
Did you ever tried something like this?
Maybe invite some speed cubers to try it? :)
Best regards from Brazil
Diogo Custodio i havent tried this exact thing, but i have used the normal solving method to create cool looking patterns (which basically works in the same way) and that takes me like 1,5min (normal solve is 17sec for me). its a fun challenge to try some time, but its annoying cuz u keep having to look at the other cube while "solving"
Thijs Beentjes , exactly. I think the funny is to break the automatic way to solve and make us think about it.
I'm not a speed cuber. I can solve in ~1min, but I like to understand how the cube works and try to find the best way to make a move.
On the "reverse solving" or "scramble challenge", I always have to think a lot, because all the automatic moves I know are now broken.
I wish some good speed cuber could try this and show how fast they can "solve" the cube for any random state given to them.
I think a lot of people already came on that idea, but I don't think anyone thought about doing that with world class speedcubers.
Maybe it'll be a official WCA event anytime soon.
Diogo Custodio the best rescramble is 17 seconds or less. Search ‘uwr rubiks cube rescramble record’
are you editing your videos with Premiere? if so, change in your rendersettings from interlaced to progressive, then you get rid of these lines when something moves fast
oh my god thank you man, this happens to me a lot
OTTWDTEWMITFGLTAM, I guess you find TWOWers in the strangest places.
Yes, interlaced pains me when it isn't absolutely necessary, lol. Progressive scan is so much nicer.
Why is it interlaced by default? We live in a digital age with LCD screens. Heck, why is 23.976/59.94 Hz still the standard in USA for digital video? Why does the colour space compress to 16-235? Why are these archaic standard still around and ruining digital video?
Love the video Matt, I was watching this one last night and when I turned on Big Bang Theory there was a Rubik's cube tissue holder on the end table in that show- odd... anyway, love your videos - you're awesome (and on OAS), Steve
Matt, love your videos! Could you do a bit on the abacus?
Matt, I'm surprised, that you didn't notice or just did't bother tellig you viewer, that there is also an dependency for rotation of two corners or two/three corner pieces. So if you disassamble and cube and rotate a corner piece on 120° it becomes unsolvable.
but then you could technically also rotate a corner on the other side
At 3:20 who else realized there are two middle whites
Payton Jacobellis i did
Good video, I enjoyed it and all your observations.
I'm surprised you point out the repeating edges several times but not the repeating center pieces which occurred nearly just as many times in all the products you showed.
0:15 already liked, for the stickers thing 😂😂👏
It's unsolvable, other than it being melted... hahaha
Science joke lol i get it
Is there any merch of SOLVED cubes...?
my heart stopped when u tried to cut it ahhaha,then u pranked me good hahahah thanks :P
Mind blown for the grand finale!
Almost gave me a heart attack with those scissors and that unopened original rubik's cube...
The tissue cover thing also has two orange-yellow edges.
Keep the hard work!!!
I love how you say at the start peel the stickers off, an d hold up a stickerless cube
The best colouring of a cube is the three primary colours and the three secondary colours, with opposite colours on opposite faces. Though it not sold that way so you have to do it yourself. I'm just looking at mine with the blue-green-purple corner and thinking - isn't that nice
*@Neville Tomatos,* nah. Best is 6 different colours between pink and purple.
So are you actually diagnosed with OCD or are you just weird?
You mean light primary (red, green, blue) and secondary (cyan, magenta, yellow) colors or printing primary (cyan, magenta, yellow) and secondary (red, green, blue) colors?
primary: red, yellow, blue
secondary: green, orange, purple
obviously
How about: Red opposite Green, Blue opposite Yellow, and White opposite Black.
Yay opponent process. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process
I'm going to be that one guy....
Ain't that the guy on Outrageous Acts of Science?
I too enjoy trying to solve possible rubiks cubes more than solving them. I often would use my speed cube and turn random corners either clockwise or counter clockwise and see if I could work them out again. I then also learned some algorithms in reverse to take a solved cube and then "transform" them into a solved cube with rotated corners.
I HAVE THE SAME SHIRT EXCEPT IN BLACK.
Totally caught the corner piece when I started wearing it haha.
For my 14th birthday cake my mom decided to make a Rubik's cube. Before she made it I demanded that she scramble an actual 3x3 and go off of that rather than just randomly smack colors on it.
Also, who was screaming at 7:54? I know I was.
48fanfromky 7:59 was a sigh of relief
0:04 XD! HAHA
😄 haha, i find cubing really interesting.. so i just ordered an insanity cube! can‘t wait to study it once i get it
Great video, you are awesome on science.
Where is the link to the beginners guide? You've not put it in the description! 🤔
Sorry! Forgot to put it in. I’ve fixed it now. Thanks. think-maths.co.uk/downloads/rubiks-cube-solving-instructions
www.kungfoomanchu.com/home.html#333 (and web.archive.org/web/20120501184706/badmephisto.com/beg.php ) and lar5.com/cube/index.html have good guides. There are many many more, such as ruwix.com/the-rubiks-cube/advanced-cfop-fridrich/ and solvethecube.com/speedcubing
Also search youtube as there are many helpful guides with each step having a separate video. Super helpful when you're practicing but struggling with a particular algorithm
For the begginers method, I used redkbs tutorial.
Is this the 1980s
Chef Shields no this is patrick
+Chef Shields - I wish
Swag Llama Hello , is this Patrick?
No it’s 2018
THE BOI THAT GAMES I wrote this in 2017
This has got to be one of my favourite SUM videos for some reason.
On the original packaging, I think the two corner pieces with green and white also make it impossible.
at least on my smartphone interlacing wasn't visible. the good thing is: deinterlacing works pretty well on full hd, even with simpler algorithms.
thx for the vid
wrong configurations happen, wouldn't even have noticed it without you mentioning it :)
If you take a real rubik's cube apart and reassemble the pieces, is it always possible to solve it? What if you take a solved cube and only rotate a corner piece or only an edge piece? Can you rotate it back or will it always result in other pieces being rotated, too?
Paul Paulson no, you can rotate a single edge piece and it would be unsolvable.
Paul Paulson a rubik's cube is not always solvable. Things that can make a standard cube unsolvable are: flipping an edge, rotating a corner once, and swapping a pair of edges/corners. Swapping an edge pair is equivalent to swapping a corner pair (can be changed from one to another using a T-permutation) and rotating a single corner once is the same as rotating two corners once in the same direction.
NO! If you rotate the edge piece for example, when you solve the cube, that edge that you rotated will still be rotated. If you did that with a corner piece, after you solve the cube, that corner will still be rotated aswell
Paul Paulson this is known as a parity, in a (normal) rubiks cube (6 different centers, nine colors per center) the total amount of combinations includes an edge piece flipped or a corner (etc.) But to be able to solve the rubiks cube more than 2 pieces have to be rotated(2 flipped edges) or more than 1 corner twisted. If not this will result in a valid scramble, but it will not be possible to flip only one edge or twist only one corner without affecting any of the others. To be able to solve the cube.
Paul Paulson no
fun fact, the original color scheme was not the yellow/white, blue/green, red/orange scheme. though its referred to as the Japanese color scheme nowadays, the original colors were white/blue, green/yellow, and red/orange (so blue and yellow were swapped compared to the current “normal” scheme). ive actually got my valk power m (new valk! gotta love it) set up with the japanese scheme because it looks a lot better when checkerboarded, and it gives this super modern cube a vintage feel. try it for yourself! it really helps with color neutrality during solves
Actually, both color schemes were used originally. I was in grade school when they came out-- my grandfather got my sister and I both a cube. Hers had the blue/green color scheme and mine was the blue/white color scheme.
Mine from 1980 (in UK, made in Hungary; Ideal Toy Corp.) is blue/green, red/white, orange/yellow.
I grew up with the blue/white colour scheme that my older brothers got.when they came out. I learned to solve it by solving the blue layer first and leaving the white on top for last.
Many years later when I went and bought my own cube, I was totally confused because the colour scheme had blue and yellow swapped, which made it harder for me to solve.
In future, I will only but the blue/white ones. The yellow/white scheme sucks.
Great content once again
I assumed you would get around to mentioning that if you remove an edge piece and put it back flipped it can't be solved. Similarly, if you rotate a single corner piece. Douglas Hofstadter talks about this in an old Scientific American article (March 1981) in his column "Metamagical Themas" (a play on the "Mathematical Games" column by Martin Gardner).
#ParkerCube
I wonder, is it possible to make an impossible Rubik's cube by disassembling the original one and assembling it in an arbitrary way? Without sticking labels, just rotating parts.
I suppose yes, but if there is the proof?
Alexander Sorkin you could for example just switch two centers.
Oops, I should clarify the question. If we exclude center switching? Central always stay in place, of course if it's disassemble, not destroying.
Yes. Assemble the cube correctly, except flip one edge. All the sequences to move the edges flip two of them at the same time. You will always have one that's the wrong direction.
Alexander Sorkin there's actually a very small chance that if you randomly assemble the cubies that it will actually be solvable. Typically you'll get to a point where you have to take out and twist a corner or likewise physically flip an edge piece.
So to answer your question, your scenario is actually the most likely outcome of such a venture.
If you take a solved cube and remove, rotate and replace one corner the cube enters a separate orbit that can not be solved by turning the faces.
I am amazed how developers of these product could do this!
We didn't need the Internet to get our hands on solution guides! Within a couple of months of me and a bunch of my friends getting our first cubes (Christmas of 1980), we were passing nth-generation photocopies of handwritten algorithms around the schools.
The "coloring" is called the color scheme of the cube
Manan daboss Whatever man.
Matheus Moura you're a non cuber
+Manan daboss You mean they're a parker-cuber?
Manan daboss that and the persistent calling of cubies other names...
You mean the colour scheme?
'Stop with the parker(blank) jokes!!!' Is what a weirdo would say
That’s a parker parker joke.
Damn it man, that's what *I* wanted to say, but instead I just got a Parker Parker Parker Joke. :(
Ben Dover
So Parker is a weirdo.
So now the parker jokes have gone to a whole new level of iteration... the parker parker parker parker of parker parker parker jokes.
As a kid I had one of these Rubik's cubes. With time they get loosen up and can be really speedy. Lovely toy for any 7-8-9 year old.
A few years ago I came across another kind of 'impossible' rubik's cube ... it was best describes as a franken-cube.
even in it's solved state it looked unsolved as one of the pieces had a hay-green tile that was easily mistaken for yellow when it was next to the regular green tiles.
How to trigger a nerd 101
*Enjoys video* *He says "This is a Valk 3, ir doesn't get better than this"* *Dislikes the video*
You were really good at the Christmas lectures
i learned how to take apart and put together the cube from my friend when I was like 8 before I even knew you could take the stickers off
It took me another 8 years to finally decide to learn how to properly solve one
Is it just me or there's a weird distortion in the video
Yes, it is called interlacing distortion. Probably an error in exporting the video. It is usually found when digitizing old video from TV since TV uses/used interlaced video (i.e. 480i, 720i, 1080i etc).
It is just you, go see a doctor
Are you using Firefox by any chance? I get the same distortion on Firefox, but it's fine when I use Chrome
720pony I use Chrome.
Right now one the CZcams app it works fine
+Haxxx5 that's because scaling down an interlaced video makes it no longer interlaced
I used to practice on my mum’s Rubik’s cube key ring. So not only did it have the original style bearings but it was also about half the size of a classic cube and had less leverage to turn the faces. Probably also a lot of dust and grit inside. I never understood how people could speed solve them. I was lucky if I could turn the faces without it getting jammed out of alignment so that no other edges would turn cleanly.
Thanks to the video you did in May/June i started cubing! I alreadt partecipated in three competitions in Italy and managed to get to a 20second average
But best of all, i quit smoke!
So glad they mentioned that cubes can be disassembled. My number one pet peeve when it comes to cubing is people being too short-sighted to think of that.
3:00 I like how he addresses the 2 BO edges and not the 2 WHITE CENTRES!
I like how you do circle those two identical ones but not the corner piece in between which has white and yellow on one cube
I started cubing by solving a decorative piece my friend gave me as a "prank"
I figured out what the wrong colors are supposed to mean by seeing your video.
Thanks!!
Congrats for making it on trending
You should do a video on impossible permutations of a rubik's cube
hehe my flatmates just an hour or two ago gave me a Rubik's Cube light as an early christmas present - it's quite nice actually, turns better than my first el cheapo "puzzle cube" that I bought myself when I first wanted to learn how to cube about ten years ago
Nice video. I have been interested in Cubing for over 7 years yet never leaned.
I'm sure someone else has pointed this out to you, Mr. Parker, but the Atari game is not a rubik's cube simulator, but rather a video puzzle cube. In the game you don't rotate faces, but rather move the colors of the squares across the faces and cube itself. Imagine the game like moving the stickers of a rubik's cube. What makes the game fun is that your character, a diminutive elf traversing the cube, cannot step on any sticker of the color that it is carrying. In this game, the photo depicted on the cover of Atari Age is completely possible. Wonderful video, Mr. Parker.
Hello from /r/cubers! Thanks for making this video!
How FUN!!!! THANK YOU!
Love that he proved it with a real cube!
cool! Dr Karl came to my school once and he was wearing the rubik's cube belt buckle! :)
Great video!
But you should disable interlacing because it doesn’t really work unprocessed on LCDs
The original Ideal Toys Rubik's Cube from 1982 has the nonstandard color scheme where white and yellow are adjacent (also blue and green). So you could imagine that the t-shirt is just very retro.
doing the rubik's cube lord's work
On the tissue cube, there's also a white, green, and blue corner. Impossible since green and blue (on just about every cube, by convention) are opposite sides.