Solved: 20 Moves (Or Less) that Unlock the Rubik's Cube Puzzle

For those of you who have may have smashed their heads against the wall (repeatedly) vainly attempting to solve the puzzle of the Rubik's Cube - and here's where I raise my hand - a team of researchers has discovered that a solution can be arrived at within 20 moves (or less.)

At the crux of the quest has been a bid to determine the lowest number of moves required to get the cube from any given muddled configuration to the color-aligned solution.

"Every solver of the Cube uses an algorithm, which is a sequence of steps for solving the Cube," said the team of mathematicians, who include Morley Davidson of Ohio's Kent State University, Google engineer John Dethridge, German math teacher Herbert Kociemba and Tomas Rokicki, a California programmer.

"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."

Their findings builds on previous work done by Morwen B.Thistlethwaite, Michael Reid and Dik Winter

You can read the full story here.