The Search For God's Number | Rubik's Cube

If God had a Rubik's Cube, how many moves would he need to solve it at most? Can we just solve every scramble to figure it out, or is there more to the search?

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[carykh]

really nice video! I love the way you had a visual number line showing the range between the lower and upper ranges over time.

[jasperdavison]

if we have god's number why has nobody called him yet

[carrotlemon]

"What if you tried to write a full list of solutions to every single possible scramble? Well, you would die" - JPerm 2020

[WheelerKyle]

I can't believe you bought 43 quintilion cubes just for this video

You're a legend

[TheCubeHackers]

0:07
“So I did a little work off camera”

[HorstiWorsti]

As a cuber and math student nerd) I really enjoyed this video. I already looked into this in the past because it interested me but to have the entire history of this in one awesome video is amazing and you explained all the stuff very well and understandably.

[Rat-ohgq]

Its honestly incredible that humans were able to compress 17 million years of work in to a couple of weeks... Its so amazing

[GuardCube]

‘69... of you ask me that’s a pretty great upper bound’ absolute legend

[mastercuber]

Honestly I didn’t understand this but I still watch it because it’s jperm

[amethystcairns]

3:34 'Imagine this. What if you tried to write a full list of solutions to every single possible scramble? Well, you would die.'

[Technopolo]

Great video! Small mistake at 16:57: it is true that a cube has 48 symmetries, but only 16 of them (48 / 3) preserve the vertical axis (i.e. the axis perpendicular to the U and D faces). The vertical axis is important because phase 1 is defined in terms of the U and D moves. So in Kociemba's algorithm only those 16 symmetries can be used.

[ReverseBurst]

“The 3x3 has 20 pieces invented 20 years before the end of the 20th century”

- Jperm

[Joshih]

Fun fact: Jperm has more cube pamphlets than the 43 quintillion possible permutations.

[cj]

This is some top notch audience-aware content that also feels like you’re branching out into new kinds of content without betraying your audience at all. We’ll done! Excellent video!

[mediochrist]

Loving these new longer style videos. A breath of fresh air compared to typical cubing stuffs.

[markjreed]

I think Morwen Thistlethwaite deserves a mention; he first came up with the idea of improvement through reducing the set of allowed moves all the way back in 1980, and found an upper bound of 52 (HTM). Thistlethwaite's algrorithm had four steps (1. all moves, 2. no quarter turns of U/D, 3. no quarter turns of U/D or F/B, 4. no quarter turns at all); with more memory and faster computers Kociemba was able to reduce that to just the two steps you mention 12 years later.

[kathiravanpalaniswamy]

Man I started knowing so much about cubing just because of you jperm. Thank you

[snowl]

It would be very interesting to find the God‘s Number on other NxN puzzles like 2x2 or 4x4, or maybe even something like a Megaminx. But honestly, could computers of today’s standards even calculate that?

[jayinterrobang]

"What if you wrote a solution to every single scramble. Well, you would die."

Or would you?

**Vsauce music starts playing**

[thebarbarian]

One of your best non cubing advice related videos yet :). Learned a lot from this one. I always wondered how upper and lower bounds were discovered