Whenever I’m not attempting to sleep, I often bust out my Rubik’s Cube on the subway to in order to pass the time. Usually, I’ll draw some mild attention. Sometimes, I’ll get asked questions about how to solve it. But a couple days ago, I happened across the holy grail of subway Rubik’s Cubing; I took out my cube just as a guy next to me took out his.

We had a moment of shared reverence for each other. Suddenly, a guy sitting across from us yelled “RACE!!” and it was on. It was on like a large primate who has a penchant for kidnapping princesses but then decides to cool it and play action sports.