[Math] Minimum number of steps needed to solve a rubik cube

puzzlerubiks-cube

Long time ago I've seen a book on group theory and there was an appendix about rubik cube. I remember there were only three steps that enabled me to solve my cube (three strings with letters encoding some rotation). I don't remember them now and I can't google something similar either (I find only very long and complicated solutions). Can somebody tell me what those steps may have been?

EDIT: Maybe this helps: I've remembered that first subroutine involved swapping edges to make crosses on each side, and the last (the longest) is rotating three corners on front side. The second was about rotating colors on corners in place or something like that.

Best Answer

Take from here:

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.)

The resulting algorithm has been called God's Algorithm and is explained here. The first page linked above even has code you can download and run on your own desktop machine.