Human Art
“Well, Rachel also said Garfield’s just about an orange cat who hates Mondays and Jon, so perhaps she’s not the best authority for human art analysis.”
– BD-916, notorious Humanity fanbot
Do fictional stories still use the ability to solve a Rubik’s Cube as shorthand for, “this character’s a genius?” I feel like ever since the internet popularized the algorithms for solving any Rubik’s Cube configuration, the puzzle’s mystique just kinda evaporated. Nowadays, anyone with a decent memory could just look up a tutorial on YouTube and recreate the steps – doesn’t really say anything about their personal ability to solve problems.
I can only imagine how the Sphinx felt when they spent ages devising their clever riddle only for Oedipus to tell everyone the answer after solving it. Considering the Sphinx doesn’t really reappear in other stories as a prolific riddlemaster, I assume that must really have been the only one they had going for them.
– James