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There are flashes of green, yellow and white as the boys move the Rubik’s Cubes nimbly, twisting the colorful squares row by row, their eyes narrowed in concentration.
“Done!” shouts one boy, followed only moments later by the others.
The group of students, gathered after school in front of San Benito High School’s main entrance, are racing to see who can solve the Rubik’s Cube puzzle the fastest. All completed the cube in less than two minutes.
More than 25 years after the Rubik’s Cube fad first swept the nation, students at SBHS have returned to the perplexing mechanical puzzle to provide them with hours of entertainment.
“It’s just a challenging puzzle,” senior Colin Kay said. “Every time you mix it up, the puzzle changes – that’s really the appeal of it.”
Many of the students credit Kay with bringing the fixation with the colorful cube to the high school, and inspiring the group to solve the puzzle.
Kay brought a Rubik’s Cube into his advanced placement physics class in late January and completed it in front of the class with ease.
“The fact that we were able to see someone do it in person and it was someone we knew, we all wanted to take a turn,” said Ross Nagareda, a senior who is also in the class. “That’s what’s so viral about it.”
The fad spread from the AP physics class, with students bringing their cubes into their other AP classes at the school and piquing the interest of their classmates.
Doug Keck, who teaches the advanced physics class, said he eventually had to ban the puzzle from his class.
“There was an incubation period for a week or two where I’d see them here or there and then suddenly they were everywhere,” Keck said. “Things started to get carried away so I had to tell them to stop. It wasn’t conducive to paying attention.”
The students said that once they’d seen one of their classmates complete the puzzle successfully, they knew they had to solve it themselves.
“It has a lure to it,” said Israel Cisneros, a senior. “You see it, and you want to try it.”
The lure of Rubik’s Cube has been around since the early 1980s. According to the Rubik’s Cube’s Web site, more than 100 million of these puzzles were sold when the trend was at its peak between 1980 and 1982 – several years before current San Benito High School students were born.
While many SBHS students have casually tried the Rubik’s Cube while at school, Kay estimates that only around 20 students carry a puzzle around in their backpack.
The group of 10 students who met after school to race the puzzle said they all found a puzzle at home or purchased one soon after seeing a friend complete it, and were determined to solve it.
“The first time it took like a week of insanity,” junior Curtis Wright said.
Most students agreed that when they first started working on the cube, their fixation with solving it bordered on obsession.
Now nearly all of the group can complete the cube so that all colors align on the same side in about 90 seconds. Kay still has the best time at around 50 seconds.
The students agree that the main appeal in the small cube that can go nearly everywhere is that it has provided endless hours of entertainment and has fought their boredom on many circumstances.
“I also do it to impress people,” said Wright, laughing.
Alice Joy covers education for the Free Lance. She can be reached at (831) 637-5566 ext. 336 or at [email protected].
