I brought a 2x2 cube with me to help with staying awake on my AMD-MAA flight yesterday morning (I was heading to Paradox). I also got a cheatsheet for a basic algorithm for solving the cube, since I was confident that I’d get nowhere on my own :)
It was initially frustrating that I was seemingly incompetent at even following instructions. Eventually, after several hits and misses (more misses and hits), the cube did start to restore itself, and it was surprisingly addictive to keep at it.
There were a couple of solves that worked out in under half a minute and most solves were under a minute in the last twenty minutes of the flight. I am not sure if I’m hooked enough to look up faster algorithms: the basic one has the advantage of being easier to memorise (fewer cases), but I figure the trade off is a suboptimal number of moves — indeed, many solves did feel redundant, but I knew no better :)