Date: 5 December 1980 0022-est From: Ronald B. Harvey Subject: Your mail of 4 DEC 1980 2300-EST To: DR at MIT-MC Cc: CUBE-LOVERS at MIT-MC Welcome to the Cube-hackers !! Note that this is my first contribution, although I have read all previous mail. First of all, there are other people who solve the cube (I, myself, average about a minute and three quarters). It is also part of the lore that there are people (overseas) who do it in 50 seconds or less. Second, while I personally get eight corners first, and then randomly go about fixing the edge cubies two at a time or so, David Singmaster, who publishes some notes in England (availability in previous mail), included, in his latest edition his algorithm, which proceeds as follows: Solve TOP edges Solve TOP corners Flip cube so that TOP is BOTTOM from now on Solve MIDDLE edges Solve TOP edges Solve TOP corners Finally, in regards to the 'most optimum solution' (also known as God's Algorithm), a person by the name of Morwen B Thistlethwaite (that's from memory - I left my notes at work) is mentioned all over Singmaster's notes as contributing algorithms. Yes, he does use a program, and his algorithm at the time of the 5th Edition took somewhere around 50 moves.