Can you beat a supercomputer?

Found this article here. I think it’s pretty funny that the person they found to ‘beat’ the supercomputer takes 109 seconds to solve the Cube (I’m not saying this is a BAD time… actually that’s right about my record too) when there is a world of Rubik’s Geeks who can solve the Cube in under 25 seconds

Scientists Daniel Kunkle and Gene Cooperman, from Boston’s Northeastern University, used a supercomputer and a two-step number-crunching technique to crack the cube.

The supercomputer took 63 hours to calculate the 43 billion possible cube positions, eventually overhauling the previous theory that all configurations could be unscrambled within 27 moves.

Melbourne Rubik’s whiz Paul Fijn has been cracking the cube since the age of nine, and has solved it in as little as 70 seconds. But the 25-year-old, who is completing a PhD in combinatorics, a branch of pure mathematics, has never tallied up his moves.

Presented with a cube by the Herald Sun, Mr Fijn unscrambled it in an impressive 109 seconds — and 118 moves.

“I never expected to beat the supercomputer,” he said. “I’m just glad I was able to solve it and not embarrass myself.”