Soon after, Chris ordered the 4x4 for him. Toki worked on it through the summer and got to the point where he could solve it some of the time. He got bored of it and put it aside until yesterday when he spent 4-5 hours reading, watching tutorials on how to solve it, and solving it.
He solved all but one row and was working on that a few minutes before I came back down to see how he was doing. This is when I discovered the broken 4x4. It got jammed and getting frustrated, he threw it against the wall. Just to give you an idea of what it looked like, I got the following image of a dissembled 4x4 off the internet. It has exponentially more pieces than a 3x3. You may think that the following image is of several cubes...but it's not....it's just one 4x4 cube.
He spent 5-6 hours putting it back together today, stopping only to do his homework and to have dinner.
Personally, I think it's harder to put it back together than it is to solve it. It has an insane amount of pieces and it takes technique, steadiness, and time.
During the process, it was knocked over and dissembled several times, on accident and on purpose, by his brothers. To which we all heard phrases such as, "I wish you were never born," "I'm going to kill you," and "I hate myself for breaking it." All are phrases that make me cringe.
At one point he assembled it only to discover that internally something was misaligned, causing one of the rows to be stuck. He took it apart and started over.
Where he gets his focus is beyond me. It will come in handy in his future for sure.
I meant to put up his video last week......Just 2 weeks ago, after practicing for a year, maybe two, he finally learned how to do the "Rainbow." This is just another example of how he gets fixated on something until he finally gets it. Of course, after he learns it, he moves on and forgets how. The other video is of some random high school kid doing the Rainbow at an actual game....once again...something I found off the good old internet.
i love it!
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