Cracking the Cube by Ian Scheffler

Author:Ian Scheffler [Scheffler, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PROOF

It’s very, very hard to find me as a person.

—Ernő Rubik

Rubik Studio, Ltd., occupies a stately house in the twelfth district of Budapest, across the street from the leafy paths and greenswards of Városmajor Park. If you were to look up the address—74 Városmajor Street—online, you wouldn’t be able to see the house, even on the street view setting of Google Maps. The building is set back from the road, behind an office complex that also counts a number of small businesses, including a boutique law firm, a mobile applications company, and several investment partnerships, among its tenants. Inspect the marquee outside, however—a column of metal plaques—and you will notice, second from the bottom, in bright red paint, RUBIK STUDIO, LTD.

There is also a rear entrance, accessible by a long, narrow ramp. This is how I entered the facility, one foggy afternoon in late April. The ramp is exceedingly difficult to navigate if you’re in a car, as I happened to be. It takes a sharp, almost ninety-degree turn before approaching a large, metal gate that must be opened electronically. Then it turns to cobblestones, and you rattle all the way down to a parking lot the size of a postage stamp. It is actually easier to reverse down the driveway, performing all the hairpin acrobatics while looking over your shoulder, than to proceed straight and face the prospect of turning around at the bottom.

This, anyway, is what János Kovács said. He drove expertly, wending his black Volkswagen sedan into the lot, registering his disapproval of a driver who had almost hit us on the street, going the wrong way. With his bald pate, ringed by close-cropped graying hair, small and neatly trimmed mustache, broad-shouldered physique, and penchant for dark sport coats, Kovács could easily pass for an Eastern European secret agent. In fact, he is one of Rubik’s longest-serving, most loyal, and reliable colleagues. In 1990, when the Cube was at its least popular, Rubik founded Rubik’s Studio, and Kovács shortly signed on and stayed for almost three decades. Kovács eventually became the firm’s director, but then left to found his own company, which now has an agreement with the Studio to produce and distribute Cubes in Hungary and several neighboring countries.

I had been introduced to Kovács by Ron van Bruchem, who surmised that Kovács might be more amenable to meeting in person than Rubik himself. Indeed, I arrived in Hungary with still no assurances that I would be able to meet the inventor, although I had been told that a rendezvous might be possible. In the meantime, Kovács offered to show me around. He was even so generous as to put me up in his house, a rambling stone pile in Budaörs, a town to the south that climbs up into the mountains. Kovács, who is in his midfifties, grew up in the house, and has since added several stories. You can see the passage of time in the styles of the different floors, from the wine cellar, which dates back centuries, to the uppermost floor, which is coated in eggshell stucco.

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