I bet he could easily solve the Rubik's Cube.

Rubik's Cube

The Rubik's Cube was invented in 1974 by a Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture, named Ernő Rubik. It was commercially released in the UK in 1978 and became a mainstay of 80s and 90s pop culture.

As implied by its name, it is a cube, with each of the six faces having nine equal-sized squares. The objective is to rotate one row of squares at a time, in order to make all six sides have nine of the same colour squares. Easy, right?

I had one as a kid and while I never really played with it a lot, it was the sort of thing I would pick up now and then whenever I was bored, and spend 15-20 mins on, before moving on to doing something else. If my memory serves me correctly, I managed to complete it a few times, without any major difficulty.

When I was in a book shop the other day, I saw one for sale. The feelings of childhood nostalgia immediately came rushing back: wow, I remember that! I had hours of fun with that as a kid!

At under £10, it felt strangely cheap, yet strangely expensive at the same time. Nevertheless, I bought it and rushed straight home to have a go. All six sides were correctly lined up with the same-coloured squares when I took it out of the box, so I jumbled them all up, confident that I would soon put them back in the correct order.

Pretty soon, a few hours had past and I quickly came to a horrible realisation: this was INCREDIBLY difficult, not to mention stressful.

I wondered how I was able to effortlessly complete it several times as a kid, yet now, as an older-and-wiser adult, was struggling beyond comprehension. Has my intelligence regressed that much as I have aged? Possibly...

I had a couple more attempts over the next few days, but each time, was left feeling equally perplexed as to how to "complete" the Rubik's Cube. I put it back in the box, knowing that A) I was not smart enough to solve it and B) I would probably never be brave enough to attempt to solve it again.

Overall, I would say that the Rubik's Cube is an interesting toy (if you can call it that). It requires A LOT of patience, which I just don't have. However, I'm sure many people will enjoy it, and I would imagine that completing it would feel very satisfying. If you want a real challenge, this is it.