Es gibt 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 mögliche (Ausgangs-) Positionen beim Zauberwürfel. Ein Team von Mathematikern und Programmierern fand heraus, dass jeder dieser Positionen mit nur 20 Zügen bzw. Drehungen gelöst werden kann.

With about 35 CPU-years of idle computer time donated by Google, a team of researchers has essentially solved every position of the Rubik’s Cube™, and shown that no position requires more than twenty moves.

Every solver of the Cube uses an algorithm, which is a sequence of steps for solving the Cube. One algorithm might use a sequence of moves to solve the top face, then another sequence of moves to position the middle edges, and so on. There are many different algorithms, varying in complexity and number of moves required, but those that can be memorized by a mortal typically require more than forty moves.

Cube 20 (via popsci)

Photo Credit: Lars Karlsson