Living: Hot-Selling Hungarian Horror

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David Singmaster, 42, an American who lectures on mathematics and computing at London's Polytechnic of the South Bank, is believed to know more about Rubik's Cube than even Ernö Rubik. Singmaster, whose 60-page Notes on Rubik's "Magic Cube" has gone into five editions, has become an unofficial repository of the puzzle's lore. An English postal engineer wrote him to report that cube playing had reduced his office's efficiency to zero, but that "being a government department, no one noticed." A Whitehall bureaucrat pleaded with him to supply the solution, since the Englishman's entire computer department was working on the puzzle.

A colleague of Singmaster's with the inimitably British name of Morwen B. Thistlethwaite is believed to be the first cubist to have realigned the puzzle in 50 moves. Mathematician Thistlethwaite claims that "50 is not very good. It should be possible to do it in 20, but no one has yet found a method." Unlike scientists, who concentrate on plotting specific procedures called algorithms that will reduce the number of necessary moves, brainy young cubers seem more interested in setting speed records. One English high school student, Nicolas Hammond, 16, has managed to unscramble a cube in 28 seconds. Some whiz kids "tune" their cubes, as their less intellectual peers might tune a hotrod; the technique consists mostly of taking the puzzle apart (no easy matter) and lubricating its moving parts.

The twiddler who can solve all six sides is known as a cubist or cubemeister. Rather than risk such status, most mortals might better heed the advice of Marc Ingenoso, a teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin: "I think it's wise never to pick the thing up."