I played with my lonely standard Cube (and a solution book) for about 5 years before I started collecting other puzzles in 2001. Because I had no written solution for the pyraminx, I was forced to solve it by myself and I recognised that I could do it on my own.

Back in 2004 I was proud to be able to solve all my puzzles on my own, in particular the several bandaged Cubes (circa 20 variants) I built until then. Nowadays my collection has grown and the puzzles I can't solve has grown with it.