How are people able to solve a Rubix Cube in only a few seconds?
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There are several parts to it. While I can solve it in about a minute, my wife can do it in about 10 seconds, so I’ll try to compare:
While we both use the same rough process, she has shortcuts for every step. For example, while we both start solving the first 2 layers of the cube, I solve the bottom layer and then the middle, while she has the foresight and pattern recognition to solve both both at once. And then the top layer while I do the common beginner process of solving the center cross, then putting the corners in the right place, and then turning the corners the right way, she does that in 2 steps, first turning all the pieces the right way around and then putting them in the right place. The methods she uses has maybe half as many moves as what I do.
She’s also much better at keeping track of where pieces are in the 3d space. A huge amount of the time I take is spent searching for where pieces are and then searching where to put the pieces. Before solving, you spend a couple seconds looking at the cube to plan your solve. When I start moving the cube, I lose track of all the pieces except the one I’m focusing on, so then I need to spend a lot of time looking for the next piece. She can keep track of multiple pieces at once, and can keep track of those pieces as she moves the cube. While the limiting factor to my solve times is how fast I can figure out what to do, for her it’s how fast her fingers and her cube can move.
Finally the physical aspects: Rubik’s brand cubes are horrible. The cubes made for speed solving have several features, such as magnets that let you just flick a face of the cube and ensures it lands where you expect, or “corner cutting”, which means the layers don’t have to be perfectly lined up before you can turn another side of the cube. Even with the same cubes, my wife is a bit better because she has the feel for how hard she has to turn a side for it to land where she expects, while I have to follow the sides most of the way or I could miss. She also has better muscle memory, where I have to think more about what to move where.
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