Publishers Weekly
06/29/2020
Hungarian architect and entrepreneur Rubik delivers a quirky memoir of a man and his eponymous creation. The narrative begins in 1974, when 30-year-old Rubik is building “Cube” prototypes with wood, rubber bands, and fishing line. Describing his memoir as a “meta” work, echoing the chaotic cube-solving experience itself, he reflects on the joys and challenges of design in general, and his eventual achievement, the Rubik’s Cube: “Its core is like that of the earth’s, we’re drawn to it by gravity,” he writes. And as the Cube’s success proves, “in the rare cases when the harmony of function and design miraculously come together, beauty is achieved.” One hundred million of them were sold worldwide within three years of its 1980 release, a level of popularity that Rubik attributes to the fact that it’s “a puzzle that needs no instruction manuals or elaborate rules.” After recounting the Cube’s many pop culture appearances in media and the emergence of Rubik’s Cube competitions, Rubik takes readers on a series of digressions, including one on the “unknowable mysteries of the cube.” It’s a clever concept, but the narrative rambles. Despite his otherwise charming and humble delivery, the book may not keep the casual reader engaged, though puzzle enthusiasts and design students will find plenty of takeaways. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"While the book tells the story of how Rubik, a Hungarian architect and professor of design, invented the Cube as a way to demonstrate a geometric problem, it also is laced with his thoughts about curiosity, change and the meaning of life" —Forbes
"A rewarding, idiosyncratic autobiography" —Nature
"In Cubed, the Hungarian inventor and architect goes into detail explaining how a bold thirst for knowledge has animated his life. He tells the story of how he invented the toy which bears his name, and how his childhood helped turn him into the man he is today. Going one step beyond this, Rubik uses his cube as an allegory for the nature of knowledge itself, a field of study known as epistemology" —Salon
"Rubik's book is more than just a memoir. It's a manifesto for a whole way of thinking, for the need to retain your childhood playfulness into adulthood if you wish to create anything of worth" —Daily Mail
"The inventor of the Rubik's Cube on what life and his beloved puzzle have taught him . . . An idiosyncratic and gripping memoir about his life and the indomitable career of the Cube"—Observer
"As a school maths teacher and a puzzle writer, I encourage all curious people to open their minds to the words on these pages. This is in part a manifesto for anyone wishing to become a creator. Unleash your creativity with Mr Rubik as your guide"—Bobby Seagull
"The rise and enduring power of the world's most popular puzzle toy . . . Cubed is less a memoir than a chronicle of Rubik's evolving relationship with his creation" —Financial Times
Kirkus Reviews
2020-07-07
The Hungarian inventor of the Rubik's Cube cheerfully recounts its history as well as his own.
“I hate to write,” admits Rubik (b. 1944) early on, and what he's written here is far from a conventional memoir. Readers will glean some of the basic facts of the author’s biography, at least up until the point in the narrative about his hiring as a professor of design and architecture. He only provides glimpses of his wife and kids, but he lovingly details the houses he has designed and occupied. The Budapest native was raised by a stern engineer father “obsessed with creating the perfect glider” and a sweet, poetically inclined mother. Though school “was not able to capture [his] attention,” he did like drawing and figuring out puzzles. His best-known invention was conceived in his spare time in 1974, and the most fascinating sections of the book describe the various challenges he faced and surmounted in creating the object he considers “my boy, my son” as well as the problems he had in solving the puzzle after it was created. (Those who have been stumped by it will be happy to learn that it took Rubik a month to figure out how to get the pieces back into their original pattern.) As the creator of the puzzle, he has some intriguing insights about what has made it so enduringly popular, suggesting that it creates “a harmony in the mind, the heart, and the hands” and invites the player to “start a dialogue with it.” Reflecting on the particulars of his life often leads him on long, sometimes generic tangents about more abstract subjects, such as creativity, curiosity, the “art of asking questions,” and artificial intelligence. But he always pulls the story back to his namesake.
A playful examination of the process of invention.
