Comments on: Omniscient Being Could Solve Any Rubik’s Cube in 20 Moves

By: JixHost

JixHost — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 04:17:57 +0000

Remember all the variants of the cube that followed…

Im not sure if the 80 s just had so many neat things or was it just that I was in the wonder years…

By: Joey

Joey — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 20:24:01 +0000

if i may, i would have to say that SuperMonkeyCube is quite posibbly the only person here who understood the reason for the research. thet commented on a regular computer chip processing power and then said that Google was able to help solve this problem in what im sure is considerably less then 35 years. the Rubix-Cube was just a problem, its great that we now know it can be solved in 20 moves. but the point of this story is that we can figure something like that out of the 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 problems we started with. and a little side note about this from Google. they recently lent that processing power of theres to a project that can now decode any idvidual genome in two hours for less then a few grand. if im not mistaken it took the decoding of the first human genome about 13 years and cost considerably more then what it cost today. getting somebody to read it for you will cost a bit more but immagin what we can do tomorrow…

By: Mitra Mojarrabian

Mitra Mojarrabian — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:49:06 +0000

Need to know the instruction to Solve Rubic Qube.

By: TexasJester

TexasJester — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:44:38 +0000

I graduated high school in 1982 – and was a part of the Cube Craze. There was a booklet out in 1981 that told you how to solve it – there was just so many moves to be done when any piece was in any position. My fastest time to solve it was 27 seconds – a classmate did it in 24 seconds. Once you know the moves, it’s not hard!

Wish I still had that booklet – I’d post the name and author… Might be google-able…

By: philip

philip — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 21:40:55 +0000

can some one please post a link how to solve it in 30 or less moves…

By: Cleo Kuehnle

Cleo Kuehnle — Sun, 29 May 2011 04:40:07 +0000

37. F*ckin’ tremendous things here. I’m very glad to see your article. Thanks a lot and i’m looking forward to contact you. Will you please drop me a mail?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 11:18:28 +0000

Just for the record, they divided the cube group into ‘cosets’ not ‘corsets’. But yeah, I’ll be looking for a publication on this. Its pretty sweet. Pure research is invaluable to the advancement of our knowledge of all things.

By: SuperMonkeyCube

SuperMonkeyCube — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 13:46:38 +0000

@Ruben – It is much easier to do the math when you think of it in pieces instead of stickers. There are eight corner pieces (three stickers apiece) and twelve edge pieces (two stickers apiece) and the six center pieces that form the framework of the cube. Each edge piece has two possible orientations, each corner has three possible orientations. However, in a solvable cube, there is parity in the orientation – you can’t have only one edge flipped, they have to happen in pairs. The corners are opposite pairs of twists or three in the same direction. Also, you can’t have only two pieces out of position, there is a minimum of three. So if you took all the ways the pieces could be assembled and then divided out the unsolvable states, you get

8! (corner positions) * 12!(edge positions) * 3^8 (corner orientations) * 2^12 (edge orientations) * (1/12) (dividing out location parity, edge orientation parity, and corner orientation parity).

43,252,003,274,489,856,000

@amphiox – It’s not like it’s the same 20 moves for every unsolved case. You would have to know the 20 moves for each of the 43 quintillion cases. Even a 40-move solution involves memorizing solutions for over 1200 last layer cases after part of the cube was already completed. Most solvers memorize between 30 and 80 cases and finish in under 80 moves (although most of the time it’s closer to 65.)

@Chris the Canadian – If you think that math is only what you can do with a calculator, then you miss the point of this entirely. Looking at a small system with a few degrees of freedom (a Rubik’s Cube) gives us ideas about how information is encoded, it gives us ideas about how complexity arises from a simple system (like DNA?) or maybe insight into compression algorithms for music encoding or data encryption. Even learning how to tackle a problem like this gives us insight into how to deal with brute force solutions.

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 07:12:01 +0000

New knowledge gained is never a waste. You can not totally predict how these results may or may not be used into other applications or sparking further research.

By: Bob Snyder

Bob Snyder — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:00:40 +0000

@amphiox – The more complex algorithms will solve the cube in less moves than the less complex. There would be no reason to have “more complex” algorithms if the “less complex” solved the cube in less moves.

By: Chris the Canadian

Chris the Canadian — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:46:28 +0000

Well gee, I’m glad THAT world dilemma was finally solved. This is news and science HOW???? I love Discovery.com but THIS, to me, is a completely needless and useless story. Tells me that some people, and computers, have too much time on their hands.

By: Ruben

Ruben — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 18:12:11 +0000

I’d like to know how they came up with the number of positions figure. It is understandable that the cube cannot be in ANY position. That is to say if you took a naked cube and were to stick on your colorful stickers, the cube may not be solvable. You will find that’s true when you’ve cheated on a cube and swapped stickers – you most likely cannot solve it any more.
That’s why I’m wondering how they came up with the number of all the positions…

By: Cedric

Cedric — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:45:07 +0000

http://rubiksolve.com

You can try it yourself with your own cube. It isn’t always 20 moves since it is limited by being web based, but its never over 25. It uses a version of the algorithm outlined in the article above.

By: amphiox

amphiox — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 18:31:09 +0000

Hmm. It’s actually kind of strange that a 40 move algorithm would be harder to memorize than a 20 move one.

By: mo

mo — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 09:32:13 +0000

No sh_t. Kinda 8( to be typing on a google phone right now.

By: Rhacodactylus

Rhacodactylus — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 19:40:07 +0000

LoL, sure glad we didn’t waste this computing power trying to fold proteins, or something silly like that =)

By: Nemesis

Nemesis — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 19:22:28 +0000

It really wasn’t all that hard, either.