Rubik's Cube

This Rubik's Cube (named after inventor Erno Rubik) is with me for years. I have lots of childhood memories of trying to solve this puzzle. I tried hard and hard but could NEVER solve it. I heard from few of cousins/friends who claimed they could solve this once but when I gave the cube to do it again they couldn't repeat the same.

I decided to solve it, so I always carried it with me and every then and there tried my hands (but no luck).

Couple of years back I read more about it and came to know few algorithms to solve it. I got to know, this puzzle is nothing but a mathematical equation and to solve the equation we need to understand & apply the algorithm.

Just knowing the algorithm was not sufficient, it's 3D object and we normally don't deal with lots of 3D puzzles. Though I had algorithm, applying the same on this puzzle was very confusing. I spent nights and all my weekends to solve it. Finally sometime in Fall 2007 I could solve it once. It was happiest moment and big achievement for me. I re-shuffled it and started solving again, for my surprise I realized, though its second attempt it is as hard as first one. Took me days again to solve it. After second attempt I had perfectly grasped the concept and solved it many many times in up coming days.

During my last visit to India while going to my Home town by Train, a guy was holding the cube and trying to solve it, I watched him for sometime, when he gave up I asked him to let me try it.. he gave the cube to me & laughed. I went back to him in few mins with solved cube in my hand; He was stunned. I explained him the algorithm and wrote the same on a piece of paper for him.

After solving the cube I learnt few interesting PATTERNS also. the two of them are shown in the blip (bottom row: c & d).

a. Shuffled b. Solved c. Center Moved d. Checker Board (alternate colors).

My best time to solve the cube is 2 mins 51 secs. If Cube is smooth I can bet to do it in less than 1.30 mins.

Few Facts:
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1. Cube has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 (43 Quintillion) possible permutations.

2. if every permutation of a 57-millimeter Rubik's cube were lined up end to end, it would stretch out approximately 261 LIGHT YEARS.

3. If you try to solve the cube PHASE by PHASE it's impossible to solve it.. it can be solved only LAYER by LAYER (Top Layer, Middle Layer then Bottom Layer).

4. Current world record to solve Rubik's cube is 7.08 second.

5. More than 350 million cubes have been sold world wide.