How Rubik's Cube cracked the code for success. The Hungarian professor founded the colorful Cube—whose basic configuration ...

Rubik, now 79 years old, always had a proclivity for puzzles, and his academic background in art and sculpting became helpful instruments in creating the first prototype of the Cube we know today.

At first glance, the cube seems deceptively simple, featuring nine colored squares on each side. In its starting state, each side has a uniform color — red, green, yellow, orange, blue, or white.

The Sudoku Cube sells for about $10 and is more complicated than Rubik’s Cube. Horowitz’s cube challenges the player to align numbers one through nine on one or more sides or in rows. The colourful ...