# I have a bunch of Rubik's Cube books from the 80's



## blah (Mar 31, 2010)

So today I managed to get my hands on a couple of ancient books:

1. Notes on Rubik's Magic Cube by David Singmaster (1981, Enslow Publishers, ISBN 0-89490-043-9)
2. Handbook of Cubik (that's how it's spelled) Math by Alexander Frey and David Singmaster (1982, Enslow Publishers, ISBN 0-89490-060-9)
3. Rubik's Cubic Compendium by Erno Rubik (no kidding!), Tamas Varga, Gerzson Keri, Gyorgy Marx, and Tamas Vekerdy (1987, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-853202-4)

Just thought I'd let you guys know in case anyone's interested in somehow obtaining copies of them or retrieving information from them.

These are not stupid "Learn How to Solve Rubik's Cube in X Simple Steps!" books. Most of the content (except maybe the last book) revolves around very heavy group theory and they talk about commutators and legal cube states and subgroups and generators and permutation parity and the like. We don't even have websites like them these days, ryanheise.com is the closest thing to these books I can think of and it's not even half as good. Just so you know, the solutions all appear at the back of these books as "unimportant" appendices.

In short, there's nothing speedcubey about these books, but I think they are pretty valuable for the serious cube theorist who wants to know his or her fundamentals.


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## puzzlemaster (Mar 31, 2010)

Are you planning on selling them? Seem's interesting...I found a copy of some book at a local library on some solution as well...however it wasn't in color and each side was represented by a different gradient.


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## Parity (Mar 31, 2010)

Pics?


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## blah (Mar 31, 2010)

In case it wasn't immediately obvious: No, I do not plan on selling these books, are you kidding me?


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## puzzlemaster (Mar 31, 2010)

Haha my mistake...seems like they're pretty valuable now...i looked up the one by erno rubik. It's around 27 bucks on amazon...interesting.


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## Lucas Garron (Mar 31, 2010)

I really want to have my own copy of the other books.

Do you have Joyner's "Adventures in Group Theory"?


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## qqwref (Mar 31, 2010)

Neat. Would you be willing to scan some or all of the pages? There might be some interesting stuff, and I don't think the community as a whole has access to them.

Those who are interested in the books you listed might also be interested in Joyner's Mathematics of the Rubik's cube, containing a good amount of group theory and a discussion of cube subgroups and solution ideas for several puzzles.


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## blah (Mar 31, 2010)

Lucas Garron said:


> Do you have Joyner's "Adventures in Group Theory"?



Funny you should ask, because that's the one book that I also have but left out from the list because it's not from the 80's


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## Stefan (Apr 2, 2010)

I very much like Rubik's chapter in that third book, very nice to read his own account of the creation of the cube. Got that book from Village Games in London, very very nice shop.


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