The numbers
The 3×3 Fewest Moves, in numbers
Everything countable about the 3×3 Fewest Moves: the mathematics of the puzzle with its sources, and the live state of the sport, rebuilt nightly.
- A 3×3 has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 positions (43.25 quintillion). Visiting one per second would take about 1.4 trillion years, roughly a hundred times the age of the universe. cube20.org
- God's Number is 20. God's Number answers a simple question: what is the worst case for a perfect solver? However scrambled the cube, a shortest possible solution never needs more than 20 moves. That was proven in 2010 by Rokicki, Kociemba, Davidson and Dethridge, using about 35 CPU-years of computing donated by Google. cube20.org
- Fewest Moves is the one event scored in moves, not seconds: one hour to find the shortest written solution to a scramble. The world record is the event where God's Number matters most, because it is the theoretical ceiling for the hardest positions. The world record of 16 moves beats the 20-move worst case by four. cube20.org
- The world record single is 16 moves by Sebastiano Tronto, standing 2,640 days.
- The world record average is 19.00 by Brian Johnson, standing 127 days.
- 128,244 completed solves are on the official record in 3×3 Fewest Moves, from 3,880 competitions in 115 countries.
- 12,294 people hold an official ranking. The median personal best among all of them is 40 moves.
- The world record has moved 9 times since records began in 2003.
- 115 countries hold a national record, and the spread is wide: the fastest is 16 moves, the most beatable 63 moves.
- Results begin in 2003; every figure on this page recomputes nightly from the official export.
Single record lineage → · Average record lineage → · All events →