Inventor of Rubik’s Cube turns 80 — and looks back on 50 years of the world’s most popular puzzle toy

Fifty years ago, as he sat in his mother’s apartment in Budapest, Hungary, young professor, Ernő Rubik, finally finished the prototype of his “Magic Cube.”

A teacher at the Department of Interior Design, Rubik was fascinated by geometry but his attempts to create a solid, 3D structure with movable and interchangeable layers had frustrated him. 

But after months of perseverance, Rubik struck gold – not that he was thinking about any commercial possibilities. “I just made it for my own curiosity,” he told The Post in a video call. “I suppose it’s like being an artist. If you’re happy with your creation, you want to show people. 

“You want it to be liked.”

Half a century and 500 million sales later, it’s estimated that one in every seven people on the planet has attempted to solve what became “Rubik’s Cube,” a puzzle with a mind-boggling 43 quintillion permutations.

A cultural phenomenon, Rubik recently set about counting how many magazine covers his cube had appeared on but stopped when the tally passed 1,500. 

It’s not just magazines. 

From featuring in “The Simpsons” six times and being played by the eponymous hero in Pixar’s “WALL-E” in 2008, it is always on our screens. Justin Bieber even solved it on the “Late Late Show” with James Corden in 2015.

On Saturday, July 13, Ernő Rubik will be 80 years old. 

‘The Cube loves attention – but I don’t’

The son of an aerial engineer who designed gliders, he planned to pursue an academic career, right up until the idea of his Magic Cube popped into his mind and refused to leave.

While Rubik initially used his cube to teach geometry students, it was only when he was granted a patent for his “three-dimensional logical toy” and a local manufacturer made 5,000 units for him that his invention took off. 

By 1979, just two years after it hit shelves in Hungary, the Magic Cube had sold 300,000 units, piquing the interest of international toymakers. When American company Ideal Toy bought the rights to the Magic Cube in 1980, renaming it “Rubik’s Cube,” sales went stratospheric.

International toy fairs were key to its success — and none was bigger than New York’s.

Rubik first visited NYC in early 1980 when he unveiled his Cube at the New York Toy Fair. 

It was Rubik’s first-ever trip to the West and a way to circumnavigate his homeland’s strict, Soviet-controlled export laws. “I was always a curious child so I was familiar with New York from movies or magazines but being there was totally different, especially coming from behind the Iron Curtain.

“The smells, the noises, the temperature – it was unlike anything I had experienced.”

His visit to New York was also the first time he realized that with success, inevitably, came celebrity – and he didn’t like it.

“I never understood it,” he shrugs. “Why do people want to be famous? It’s not something I wanted but I had to tolerate it. It was very tiring. 

“I’ve said it before, the Cube loves attention – but I don’t.”

3.13 seconds

Today, it’s estimated that Rubik’s Cube has sold half a billion units – and that doesn’t include the fakes that flooded the market.

Since the turn of the century, and through COVID, it’s also taken on a new lease of life as “Speedcubers” turn their backs on digital devices. The World Cube Association (WCA), for example, hosts regular competitions, including the North American Championship 2024 at the Minneapolis Convention Center in Minneapolis MN on July 18 to 21. 

The event brings together America’s best speedcubers, including two-time champion Max Park. In December 2021, the 22-year-old from Cerritos, Calif. set a new world record for completing the cube in just 3.13 seconds – or less time than it takes to read this sentence.

In comparison, when the first ever Rubik’s Club World Championship was held in Budapest in June 1982, the winning time, by America’s Minh Thai, was 22.95 seconds.

Remarkably, Rubik thinks Park’s time could come down further.

“Look at athletics and the 100-meter sprint. Just when you think they can’t go faster humans always find a way,” he says. “It’s the same with the cube. It’s evolution.”

Rubik also believes his cube should be in the Olympic Games. 

“People say the Olympics is about physical activity but you must remember that, yes, the cube is intellectual but it’s also physical because you need very fast hands.

“That’s why younger people are good at it.”

Art and science

Fifty years on and Rubik’s view of what he calls “my boy, my son” changes on any given day.

Just don’t ask Rubik about money.

He is mum on how much of a financial haul the wildly popular Cube has earned him since its inception; a spokesperson told The Post that “he rarely comments on any business-related queries as his main interest has always been artistic and cultural.”

“It is art and science, it’s about the relationship between it and people,” Rubik says.

“Every week I find something new,” he adds. “That’s what makes it so interesting but also so difficult to understand.”

There are occasions when politicians could learn from the Cube, too.

“The most seemingly unsolvable problems can be solved if you have the intellectual power,” he says. “You can’t give up just because something looks unsolvable.”

The secret to its enduring appeal, says Rubik, is that in an era of unprecedented technological change, where screens monopolize attention, the cube creates what he calls “a harmony in the mind, the heart and the hands.” 

The real trick, however, is what it did for those children, who might have been bright but shy or awkward, but who could, to the amazement of their peers, solve the cube.

“They became superheroes,” he laughs.