Easily thousands of times. I learned back in high school, on a forum that went onto be a very fondly remembered element of my teenage years.

It’s really not that hard if you can memorize a few algorithms. I learned a very basic set of general algorithms, like half a dozen. Not very efficient, but easy to learn and I can still solve one in about a minute.

If you want to get into proper speed cubing you can learn dozens, or even hundreds, of increasingly specific algorithms. This, combined with a high quality cube and finger tricks, can get you closer to 10 seconds.

But if you just want to be able to solve one, you can learn in an afternoon.

Yes. With my hands, Bert. I solved it with my hands.

Yes. I got two for my oldest children as Easter gifts. They scrambled them and after a few minutes of frustration, left them lying on the floor.

I encourage them to keep trying to solve them but they told me " what chance do I have if you can’t even do it?" I thought about it and realized that they were right.

I downloaded a PDF of a Rubik’s beginner guide I found online and solved it in about an hour. I felt like I had conquered the world!

While bragging to my wife I saw my youngest scrambling it again and my heart sank. My wife saw my reaction and said “what’s the big deal? Don’t you know how to do it now?”

I explained that I had essentially cheated, but had to admit that the steps weren’t as hard as I had imagined. I decided then and there that I was going to learn and eventually memorized the beginner method!

After getting a speed cube and lots of practice, I started averaging about 2 mins. After watching some videos online I decided to give the CFOP method a try. It felt like starting over but I was patient and now I can do it in close to 30sec.

There was a website where you could enter the “pattern” you had and it would give you step-by-step instructions… My mate’s kids used to go to bed with scrambled cubes and every morning wake up to it solved. They thought their father was a cube savant.

The only winning move is not to play.

Just in case you want an answer from a stupid person:

3x3 you solve by trying to match opposite sides. Like, work on 2 colors at once then move on to another pair.

Any size bigger than that you have to a start learning math because they can be put into states where it’s impossible to disentangle certain pieces without following exact moves.

There are many good methods. They aren’t hard to learn as long as you can memorize a few 7-10 move algorithms.

For people recommending using screwdrivers and sticker peeling, they’re actually much easier than that to disassemble and reassemble. Turn one face 45 deg. Pop an edge up. The whole thing will fall apart. Tougher to assemble but not too bad. Only problem is you have a 2/3 change to accidentally assemble an unsolvable corner rotation and a 50% chance to assemble an unsolvable edge flip. Both are easily fixed if you can spot it by flipping any edge and rotating any corners once or twice as needed, but then if you’re able to spot it, you already know that.

I dismantled it and rebuilt it.

Yes. I looked up algorithms for the last layer. After a few solves it stuck in muscle memory.

The first solves took a good while, but I was getting consistently under a minute after a week.

I haven’t speedcubed in quite a few years, but I spin the 4x4x4 a few times a week to keep those parity problems in muscle memory.

looked up the algorithm

I was able to solve the first two layers of the cube when I was around 5 (I found it in the toy chest at my grandmother’s and spent the entire trip working on it)

A long time later, in highschool, I bought one and tried to solve the whole thing myself. After a couple days I gave in and looked up how to do the last bit.

Once you learn the steps it’s hard to forget them and it’s surprisingly easy to generalize them for other sizes/shapes of cubes.

In true billionaire style, I paid someone else to do it and then took credit since it was my money that made it possible.

No, it confounds me how they even move how they do.