Hunglish.orgA brief musing on Ernő Rubik, inventor of that maddening and wonderful cube...
Written by Scott Savoie
Ernő Rubik, the inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, is a Hungarian. He was born in Budapest at the end of World War II.
I think this is significant in a couple of ways. First of all, only a Hungarian could come up with something so complex from something so simple (a cube). In fact, his assignment was probably simply to make a cube, and the world famous puzzle is what he came up with.
The Hungarian language and Rubik’s Cube have quite a lot in common. For example, both have exactly 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 permutations.
In fact , you can actually learn to speak Hungarian using a Rubik’s Cube. First, simply write the word „meg” on all the white squares, „fel” on all the blue squares, and „ki” on all the orange squares. Write a few verbs on the red squares, some nouns on the yellow squares, and presto: You have a Hungarian grammar machine!
Somehow you can form correct Hungarian sentences with it, and this method would probably take less time than to actually learning the language.
Judging by the system’s complexity, I am guessing Mr. Rubik may have also designed the tax system, immigration procedures, and the Hungarian healthcare system.