If you have already learned how to solve a Rubik’s cube, then you may start getting bored with it. That’s when you can start coming up with new ways to make it a challenge. Here are a few suggestions:
- Solve it with only your dominant hand
- Solve it with only your non-dominant hand
- Solve it blind-folded
- Solve it from a different face than you are used to (e.g., instead of starting with white, start with a different color)
- Solve it to a different state (e.g., solve it to the checkerboard pattern)
- Try to fully scramble the cube (i.e., such that no face has two adjacent squares with the same color)
Fully scrambling a cube is surprisingly difficult. I managed to do it after a minute or two when I first thought of it, but then doing it again took a long time. It is however possible and I’ve recorded my last three scrambles (I didn’t note down the first one). It is possible with a 2x2x2 as well as a 3x3x3. I don’t know if it possible with higher-order cubes. As a tangentially-related challenge, see if you can mathematically prove or disprove the possibility of fully-scrambling higher-order cubes.
