Archives

I have used Cube Explorer to solve all "tripod finish" cube configurations. All positions were solved in no more than 15 face turns. I calculated an average distance of about 12.746 face turns per position.

A "tripod finish" configuration has all cubies solved except four corners and three edges that make a configuration resembling a tripod. For example, corners URF, UFL, UBR, and DFR along with edges UF, UR, and FR make up one representative tripod configuration. For the above tripod configuration (or any equivalent one), there are a total of 7776 possible legal arrangements of the cubies. These 7776 arrangements can be reduced by symmetry to 1317 cases.