Every Sunday afternoon in Sayles 253, a small group of students gather around a table scattered with brightly colored cubes. Clicking and snapping fills the room as each person turns, twists and studies their puzzle. Sometimes they race. Sometimes they help each other. Sometimes they just talk. This is Carleton’s Rubik’s Cube Club, one of the most recent additions to life on campus. 

The club officially began meeting this fall, offering a space for anyone curious about “cubing.” The club welcomes anyone, whether they’re a seasoned cube solver or brand-new to cubing. 

“Sometimes people will show up who have no idea how to solve a Rubik’s Cube and we’ll try to help them figure it out,” club president Bryce Bernstein ’26 said. “Other weeks, if everybody knows how, it’s people sitting around talking about strategy or racing.” 

The idea for the club had been in the works for a while. “Back in freshman year, my roommate Andrew and I really got into Rubik’s cubes,” Bernstein said. “We kind of had an interest in starting the club for a while, but, just because there were a lot of things going on, there wasn’t always time to do it. Last year, we decided it was time for us to actually take action and get working on making the club.”

Meetings take place every Sunday from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m., and attendance so far has hovered around six to seven members. The club has only formally met once, but Bernstein hopes with time, the club will grow.

“Hopefully, just by word of mouth, people having a good time will talk about it,” Bernstein said. 

The group’s structure is intentionally informal, allowing the focus of each meeting to depend on who walks through the door.That openness, Bernstein believes, is part of what makes the club enjoyable. 

“It’s really exciting to see somebody’s first solve,” he said. “People who already know how to solve are fun to watch too, but the best part is seeing somebody do it for the first time.”

The sense of directness is what drew members like Cruz Cortez ’28 to the club. “It’s kind of nice to have something that’s just chill,” Cruz said. “I like being able to sit around and work on the cube and not really think about anything else. It’s fun and relaxing.”

Other members share the same sentiment. Eric Karp ’29, a newer cuber, joined out of curiosity. “I just wanted to do some sidequests,” he said. “College sidequests, I feel, have been super fun. I had never sat down and learned how to solve a Rubik’s Cube before. It was just fun to do.”

Karp described the club’s meetings as welcoming and supportive. “The vibe at the meetings is super fun,” he said. “Everyone is super cordial, and Bryce has been super supportive and has been showing me the steps of how to solve it, the cube that is a regular three-by-three.”

For many, the Rubik’s Cube is synonymous with competition. But for Carleton’s club, speed isn’t the only goal. “There’s a level of competition, but the main person people are competing against is themselves,” Bernstein said.

“The biggest misconception people might have about the hobby is the level of competition,” Bernstein added. “The main opponent is yourself, it’s not other people.” Many club members try to speed-solve cubes, aiming for a faster solve each time.

Bernstein said he had gotten his solve time down to 10 seconds, while Cortez mentioned how he narrowed his solve time to 16 seconds. “Other members I know have also solved it even faster than me. I think one of us has done it in seven seconds,” Bernstein said. “But maybe with the cube club starting, we can get somebody who is faster.”

Despite the close times between club members, participants often help each other with their time. “We’re all here and we’re all trying to be the fastest for ourselves, but it’s not like something where I am jealous if somebody is faster than me,” Bernstein said. “I’m just trying to make myself better at cubing, and I think everybody has a similar idea. The point isn’t to be the fastest, the point is to get better.”

That improvement-focused philosophy shapes the club’s atmosphere. Members can experiment with different solving methods, share techniques or simply hang out and cube for fun. The club also encourages new players to join, and prides itself on being able to teach them.

“I solved the cube at the first meeting,” said Karp. “As a kid,… I learned how to solve a layer, but I never went beyond that, mostly because I never had the real motivation to. But here, it’s a way for me to relax and just forget about assignments.”

The environment is casual yet competitive, with club members regularly exploring strategies and techniques to achieve faster solves.  “When you’re solving at a super high level, every move matters,” said Bernstein. “You can take some really creative steps to reduce the number of moves that you have to do.” 

Cubing also creates a unique type of thinking. Solving under time pressure involves visualization, memory and spatial reasoning. As Bernstein said, “When you’re trying to solve it fast, you’re figuring out how much you can possibly know before you start. You get 15 seconds to look at the cube before you have to make any turns, and that really works your spatial intelligence.”

Solving a Rubik’s Cube also exercises intuitive and analytical skills. “Part of it is intuitive in the sense of just knowing what the easiest way to go about solving it is,” said Cruz. “But then it’s mostly analytical because the way it’s solved, there are a bunch of sets of moves that we call algorithms that do certain things to the different pieces on the cube to help you solve it.”

While the club is still in its early stages, its members have already begun dreaming big. They plan to attend an official World Cube Association competition this year. “We definitely have some funds to take a few people to a competition this year,” said Bernstein, “but we’ll see how the pacing of things goes with terms and when people are available.”

The club also hopes to eventually host their own tournament. 

“I don’t think that’s a realistic goal for the two terms I have left and the amount of time I have to put into this,” Bernstein said, “but I would love to see it happen in the future. If I did hear that it had happened, I would totally come back and attend that competition.”

For now, the focus is on growth. The club plans to send out a campus announcement and hopes word of mouth will bring in new members. “At any college, club diversity is important,” Bernstein said. “You don’t want all your clubs to be doing the same thing. There really isn’t any sort of club like this here.”

That uniqueness, he believes, fits perfectly with Carleton’s student body. “I think the average Carl is super curious,” Bernstein said. “Learning to solve these things is fascinating to most people.”

Karp also believes that clubs like the Rubik’s Cube club play an important role in campus life. “The club provides a space where people can just hang out and help deepen the diversity of interests available to people here,” he said. “It’s exciting how these small clubs, less well-known than the athletic clubs, act as linchpins for the network people can build here at Carleton.”

For some students, that diversity is precisely what makes the Rubik’s Cube club special. Whether they’re trying for personal bests, mastering new algorithms or just picking up a cube for the first time, the club offers something for everyone.