Sorry to spoil your day, but.....

As you may know Ideal Toy has international rights to the manufacture
and distribution of the cube. I just spoke to a fellow from Ideal
who is writing up a solution booklet for them and he told me the
following:
1) When Ideal first bought the rights (and by the way Rubik gets
nothing- his "institute" gets it all) they discussed various
national promotion schemes. One of them was to offer 1000K bucks
to the first person to solve it less than 1/2 hour- that right
1 million.
2) One of the first stores in NY to carry it put adverts in the paper
offering $50 to anyone who could solve 1 face in 1/2 hour. They
lost $3,000 before they ended the offer the next day.
3) A fourth grade girl from Florida solved the cube in 3 weeks and can
now do it in under 5 minutes.
4) The 2x3x3 solid does exist and will be marketed by Ideal later this
year. However, instead of colors it has "dominoe" like faces, whatever
that means.