Rubik's Clock

The front face of the original Rubik's clock

Rubik's Clock is a mechanical puzzle invented and patented by Christopher C. Wiggs and Christopher J. Taylor. The Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik bought the patent from them to market the product under his name. It was first marketed in 1988.

Rubik's Clock is a two-sided puzzle, each side presenting nine clocks to the puzzler. There are four wheels, one at each corner of the puzzle, each allowing the corresponding corner clock to be rotated directly. (The corner clocks, unlike the other clocks, rotate on both sides of the puzzle simultaneously and can never be operated independently. Thus the puzzle contains only 14 independent clocks.)

There are also four buttons which span both sides of the puzzle; each button arranged such that if it is "in" on one side it is "out" on the other. The state of each button (in or out) determines whether the adjacent corner clock is mechanically connected to the three other adjacent clocks on the front side or on the back side: thus the configuration of the buttons determines which sets of clocks can be turned simultaneously by rotating a suitable wheel.

The aim of the puzzle is to set all nine clocks to 12 o'clock (straight up) on both sides of the puzzle simultaneously.

The current official world record for solving this puzzle as quickest as possible is held by Nathaniel Berg with a time of 3.73 seconds which was solved at Danish Open 2015. The record average of 5 (dropping best and worst singles) is 5.94 seconds is by Evan Liu, done at the Xi'an Cherry Blossom 2015.

See also

• Mechanical puzzle
• Combination puzzle

External links

• Rubik's Clock Solution An illustrated description of the solution.
• Unofficial Records Speedcubing.com's page of unofficial records for the Rubik's Clock
• Real Genius Computer game implementation of Rubik's Clock for the Commodore Amiga, released in 1989