Rubik's Cube

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Rubik's Cube is a 3-D mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 
by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture 
Ernő Rubik. Originally called the "Magic Cube", the puzzle 
was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toys in 1980 and 
won the German Game of the Year special award for Best
Puzzle that year. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes have 
sold worldwide making it the world's top-selling puzzle game. 
It is widely considered to be the world's best-selling toy.

In a classic Rubik's Cube, each of the six faces is covered by
nine stickers, among six solid colours (traditionally white,
red, blue, orange, green, and yellow). A pivot mechanism 
enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the 
colours. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be a solid 
colour. Similar puzzles have now been produced with various
numbers of stickers, not all of them by Rubik. The original 
3×3×3 version celebrates its thirtieth anniversary in 2010.