The Rubik’s Cube is one of the most iconic mathematical puzzles ever invented, created by Hungarian architect Ernő Rubik in 1974.

A standard 3×3×3 cube has-1 possible configurations — roughly 43 quintillion!

And here’s the remarkable mathematical result: every reachable configuration can be solved in 20 moves or fewer, provided a 180° face turn counts as one move.

Proven in 2010, this result is known as God’s Number.

A simple-looking puzzle. More than 43 quintillion configurations. And a mathematically proven upper limit on the number of moves needed to solve any of them.

Reference: [God’s Number Is 20 —]//www.cube20.org/)

Every position of Rubik’s Cube™ can be solved in twenty moves or less.

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. We consider any twist of any face to be one move (this is known as the half-turn metric.)

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.