Blast from the past: my not-quite-eight-year-old son suddenly wanted to own a Rubik’s Cube. A couple of his classmates had one, and he was fascinated with the colorful 3D puzzle.

I used to own a bunch myself, and had a method of solving the thing memorized from a convenient little booklet. Unfortunately, we had recently cleaned out our attic, and two of the items we’d thrown out were my collection, and the booklet.

So after we’d bought my son a brand-new cube (giving him my old one was no longer an option), and he twisted it into a great big mess and asked me to solve it for him, I first slipped into a bit of a panic. But then muscle memory kicked in, and before I knew it, his cube was solved, and memories had resurfaced of the theoretical details of the method I’d learned.

Because losing the method would be a waste–and because I’m a geek–I’ve now documented the entire method in a series of pages on my site.