Correct me if I'm wrong:
There are :
256! (256 pieces)
x 4^256 (each square piece can be put in 4 different positions)
/ 4 (the final solution
can rotate in 4 different orientations, but remains one single)
= 2,875 x 10^660 (!) solutions
Hi Jean-Michel. My calculation would be like this:Corners: 4!
remaining edge pieces: 56!
interior pieces: 196!
and only the interior 196 can be rotated for: 4^196
Divide by 4 for rotations gives:4! 56! 196! 4^196 / 4 = 2.186011490004601*10^559 possibilities
Yikes!!!!
IBM's Big Blue can operate at little over 1 pitaFLOPS (1x10^15
floating points operations per second). Supposing it could
operate continuously, it would only take about
6.931796962216517*10^536 years to run through all the
calculations. I think I'll go buy a lottery ticket with a
1-in-a-billion chances to win (virtually infinitely more likely to win!).
I wonder how many people purchased the game in hopes
to win $2,000,000.
CHUCK
Edited: 9 Jan 2008, 8:10 p.m.