No Adjacent Colors on Cube

Geometry Level 5

A Rubik's Cube is turned multiple times such that any two adjacent faces of two adjacent cublets have different colors. Find the minimum number of turns of the Rubik's Cube to achieve this.

Details and Assumptions

A turn on a Rubik's cube is either turning a face 9 0 90^{\circ} , 18 0 180^{\circ} , or 27 0 270^{\circ} clockwise.

The Rubik's cube starts at its solved state.

In the picture below, 1 1 is adjacent to 2 2 , 3 3 , and 4 4 . However, 2 2 , 3 3 , and 4 4 are pairwise non-adjacent.


The answer is 6.

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2 solutions

Discussions for this problem are now closed

Daniel Liu
Jul 6, 2014

First note that any two colors on a single cublet is always different colors (this is pretty obvious). Thus we just need to consider two adjacent faces of two adjacent cublets.

There are 12 12 adjacent cublet faces on a single Rubik's cube face(just count them). Thus, there are 72 72 adjacent cublet faces in total. Each turn can destroy at most 12 12 adjacencies (3 adjacencies per the 4 faces affected) so the lower bound is 72 ÷ 12 = 6 72\div 12=6 .

This minimum is achievable by doing the common checkerboard pattern, thus the answer is 6 \boxed{6} .

One minor thing to point out, if you only turn the center plane, you only need to turn 3 times to get the checkerboard (and thus solve the problem).

Ruiling Ge - 6 years, 11 months ago

I stated that a turn in this problem is only turning the faces.

Daniel Liu - 6 years, 10 months ago

cube cube

Use the following moves to achieve this: R 2 L 2 F 2 B 2 U 2 D 2 R^2 L^2 F^2 B^2 U^2 D^2

My best solving time is 64 seconds. Please comment yours

my fastest time is 18.56

Ken Cha - 6 years, 10 months ago

Mine is 18

Aryan Gaikwad - 6 years, 3 months ago

mine 21s XD

Đào Minh Tân - 6 years, 4 months ago

how about (middle sheet 2) (middle plane 2) (middle slice 2)

Horisadi Afyama - 6 years, 4 months ago

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