Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory (2007-2019) was perhaps the most recognisable geek archetype on all of television, and one of his most-depicted traits was being a video game addict. PlayStations, gaming laptops, old-fashioned handheld video games, he had ’em all. In ‘The Monster Isolation’ (season 6, episode 17), Sheldon smuggles all manner of video games on his person because his friends are taking him to see a play he doesn’t want to — notably, the only analogue item he carries along is the humble Rubik’s Cube.
We already know Sheldon is into ‘cubing’ (the pursuit of fast and elegant Rubik’s Cube solutions, professionally or otherwise). At various points during seasons five and six, we see him wearing a T-shirt with an image of a melting Rubik’s Cube — a geek-endorsement for one of the most enjoyable and popular puzzles in the world. 2024 marks 50 years since Hungarian architecture professor Ernő Rubik created the first prototype of his combination puzzle, wherein a 3x3 cube is painted with different colours for every face and you have to line them up, one colour for every face.
In these five decades since, the Cube has turned up regularly in blockbuster movies and TV shows. As you might imagine, a wildly popular 3D puzzle is an easily identifiable metaphor — for life-challenges, dilemmas of the heart, the frenetic feeling that life is passing you by and you need to ‘solve’ the attitudes that are holding you back. Erno Rubik, inventor o.