Will Smith Film Spikes Interest in Rubik's Cube
Posted on December 27, 2006
The Rubik's Cube was extremely popular in the early 1980s. The Rubiks.com website says that 100 million Rubik's Cubes were sold from 1980 to 1982. Will Smith's hit film The Pursuit of Happyness has reinvigorated interest in the Rubik's Cube.
In one scene in the film (see below) Chris Gardner (played by Will Smith) quickly solves the Rubik's Cube in a taxi cab.
The Chicago Tribune reports that 22-year-old Rubik's Cube expert and World Cube Association co-founder Tyson Mao helped Will Smith learn the right moves to solve the Cube.
He was the logical go-to guy, who showed Smith how to get all of 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. And Will is a pretty busy guy with many responsibilities. Basically, he had to memorize lines for his scenes and all that other stuff as well."
Smith's trainer also holds the record for solving the Cube blindfolded. A return to popularity for the Cube seems a sure bet. There are even Rubik's Cube competitions starting up again.
Here's the Rubik's Cube solving scene from the film.
Update: A new Rubik's TouchCube was introduced at the Toy Fair.