Rubik’s cube proof cut to 25 moves

See here. It took me 3 weeks the first time, about 1 week the second time. I remember setting my alarm to 5am so I could work on the cube for two hours in the morning before going to school. Eventually I got my time down to a little over 2 minutes (which is just about the longest I can concentrate on anything). There were two kinds of cube solvers: those who held the cube in a stationary orientation and spun the edges around, and those who kept turning the cube around in their hands to get just the right orientation for each move. I was of this second type, which I think kept my efficiency down. One of my math professors in college told me that he’d solved the cube in theory–he taught abstract algebra–but had never bothered to do it in practice. This impressed me to no end. A guy down the hall from me had a 4x4x4 cube, which at one point we tried to see if we could solve using only 3x3x3 operators. I don’t think we succeeded.

It’s been years since I’ve done the cube. Last time I tried and tried and tried and got stuck. If I ever want to do it again, I think I’ll have to figure out some operators again from scratch.

3 thoughts on “Rubik’s cube proof cut to 25 moves

  1. Andrew, I, like you, was once swift enough to solve any random cube in ~2 minutes. I'm suspecting that I am a bit older than you, as I haven't held a Rubik's cube in 25 years. I would be absolutely flummoxed if somebody handed me one now. I remember those days though…good times, indeed.

  2. Hi Andrew – like the previous poster it was over 20 years ago for me that I attempted the Rubik's Cube. The new Rubik 360 Erno has created seems more suited to my approach of "trial and error" which failed missarably on the Cube.

  3. I tried in the past one cube. I got stuck in it in 1 week. After a few years I tried again for almost 4 weeks and I've done it! I don't know if there's a technique but I've made it! :)

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