Though competitive solving of the Rubik’s cube goes right back to the early eighties, the expression speedcubing didn’t become established until the early noughties, when widespread use of the Internet raised the profile of the activity and inspired a whole new generation of solvers. The practice even has its own sublanguage, featuring expressions such as cubie (one of the little individual coloured cubes which make up the whole), lubed (‘lubricated’), and abbreviations like F2L (standing for ‘first two layers’).