The Rubik's Cube dates to my childhood, when it was for leaving on a desk to be fiddled with — or, for a select few strange birds, for actually solving, sometimes very quickly. At that time, knowing ...

On a mild autumn day in 2016, the Hungarian mathematician Gábor Domokos arrived on the geophysicist Douglas Jerolmack’s doorstep in Philadelphia. Domokos carried with him his suitcases, a bad cold, ...

The simple Rubik's Cube is a harder problem than most people realize. Using the currently provided best algorithm for solving the cube, for example, would take the computer you're reading this on now ...

In 2010, an international team of researchers proved that no matter how scrambled a Rubik’s cube got, it would require no more than 20 moves to solve it. Their proof, however, relied on the equivalent ...