CHENNAI: Three years ago K Prithveesh, an engineering student from SDM Institute of Technology, Ujire stumbled upon a Rubik’s Cube in his friend’s hostel room. He had never seen this piece of 3-D combination puzzle. But little did he know that he would go on to solve it in under 40 seconds, and later hold a Guinness record for the largest dual-sided Rubik’s Cube mosaic art.
A celebrated Rubik’s puzzle artist of India, Prithveesh has been relentlessly creating innovative mosaics with the game, which was found 43 years ago. In a tête-a-tête, Prithveesh, who was recently at Phoenix MarketCity (PMC) to create a Republic day-themed mosaic art, spoke to us about his journey.
“When I found the Rubik’s Cube in my friends room, we began discussing a lot about it. Once you purchase it from the shop and shuffle it, no one gets the time to put it back together. So I took it along with me and began researching,” he says. Prithveesh browsed through various videos for solutions. “Several videos later, I made a six-step algorithm, and documented it,” shares the engineering graduate who took almost a month to solve the ‘Rubik’s puzzle’ when he first set his hands on it.
“After learning to solve the puzzle, I began timing it. Now, I am able to solve it in 38-40 seconds,” shares Prithveesh, who has authored a book called Rubik magic, which talks about easy formulae for children to solve the puzzle.
“Once I got a hang of it, I began teaching children. I have taught over 2,000 people to date. It helped in improving brain-hand-eye coordination,” he shares. Prithveesh holds a record for training 500 students, to solve the Rubik’s Cube, in a year.
So, how did Rubik mosaic art happen? “People were already setting records for solving the puzzle in a certain span of time. I wanted to do something unique and when I researched, I found very few instances of the Rubik’s Cube mosaic art. I immediately began experimenting,” he elaborates.
While solving the puzzle takes extreme diligence, mosaic art takes more effort — to unshuffle the Cube from the solved state, segregate it and use it according to the nature of the artwork. “There are about 200-300 algorithms to solve a puzzle and four quintillion shuffles and just one solution. It has been interesting to work with Cubes and present them in an aesthetic form,” shares Prithveesh, who has created mosaic images of Charlie Chaplin, Mr Bean, Barack Obama and Narendra Modi. “I also get requests to create mosaic images of the bride and the groom during weddings. The field is expanding,” he adds.
Talking about creating an 8×10 image of the Parliament using 1,950 Cubes in a span of seven hours for Republic day at PMC, he shares, “I wanted it to symbolise the day and year India’s constitution came into force. So, I used a total of 1,950 Cubes made out of 26 buttons. It’s all calculative and inspires me to do more.”
Currently working on a software that generates digital Rubik’s mosaic art of images, he adds, “People think that trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube is just a waste of time. Many see it just as a game and not as a tool for the mind. There needs to be more awareness. It will also improve your problem-solving skills.”