121x121x121
This took just just slightly over 89 hours and over 600,000 moves.
This thing has more than 7.887496 x 10^56333 possible combinations.
(found using Chris Hardwick's formula: http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/showthread.php?22683)
More stats:
Total time: 89:02:26.601
Total moves: 623,523
Moves per second: 1.94
Real time spent: ~88 days since July 4th
Here is a small album showing screencaps of the progress: http://imgur.com/a/sWamH
I uploaded the 93 save files which record the progress I did here: http://www.mediafire.com/folder/8ts7t6xmomod7/121x121x121_Save_Files
This was done using qqwref's Isocubesim v2 program, so you need that to open them
Taken from qqwref's 111x111x111 post, this should be the history of the previous largest computer solves.
2x2x2 - January 12, 2000, by David Barr, in 35.600
3x3x3 - January 12, 2000, by David Barr, in 1:23.600
4x4x4 - January 12, 2000, by David Barr, in 5:52.460
5x5x5 - January 12, 2000, by David Barr, in 9:20.180
6x6x6 - January 13, 2000, by David Barr, in 16:42.830
7x7x7 - January 21, 2000, by David Barr, in 23:33.450
11x11x11 - March 12, 2000, by David Barr, in 1:20:15.566
11x11x11 - June 12, 2000, by Chris Hardwick, in 56:32.298
11x11x11 - February 20, 2001, by fl, in 5:24:40.242
11x11x11 - April 11, 2001, by fl, in 6:57:35.728
11x11x11 - May 25, 2001, by fl, in 2:23:04.975
11x11x11 - May 31, 2001, by vfr, in 1:36:03.768
20x20x20 - June 12, 2001, by Chris Hardwick, in 4:24:54 (solving time) or 8:13:56 (total time)
20x20x20 - March 16, 2002, by Richard Carr, in 3:53:39.573
20x20x20 - June 25, 2002, by Richard Carr, in 3:05:27.722
20x20x20 - September 7, 2002, by Richard Carr, in 2:46:48.822
21x21x21 - October 28, 2002, by Grant Tregay, in 72:38:11.378
31x31x31 - January 1, 2003, by Richard Carr, in 7:43:15.493
35x35x35 - October 1, 2003, by Joe Allen, in 103:26:10.140
39x39x39 - October 8, 2003, by Joe Allen, in 113:48:13.052
40x40x40 - February 17, 2004, by Chris Moyer-Grice, in 23:35:xx (solving time)
55x55x55 - March 18, 2004, by Joe Allen, in 23:00:24 (solving time)
100x100x100 - December 20, 2008, by Ravi Fernando and Peter Greenwood, in 820:13:11.220
111x111x111 - May 19, 2013, by Michael Gottlieb, in 29:51:02.641 (solving time) or 246:48:xx (total time)
121x121x121 - September 30, 2013, by Adrian Acosta, in 89:02:26.601 (solving time) or ~2106 hours (total time)
This is of course done on a computer, and it's part of the list of largest computer solves but I don't see why it shouldn't extend to being considered the largest solve ever.
Here is a little bit of info I wrote about how I went on solving this. Largely based on how qqwref solved the 111x111x111, except he did an edges first method vs my centers first method.
I began with a centers first method. Similar to the approach that qqwref used I divided the solution to each center into two parts. Solving each center was essentially applying these two steps with variations to account for the new restrictions not to disrupt already solved pieces. While the edges were essentially just the same common method used for regular big cubes just scaled up.
Cleaning
Finishing
The cleaning step was just attempting to solve many pieces as fast as possible at once.
The finishing step was focusing on solving the pieces that weren’t solved, individually if necessary.
For example, with the first face cleaning:
Start with blue center with the solved pieces held on D.
Use the F face to work on building vertical lines.
Use xU moves until you bring blue pieces from the R, B, and L layers to the F layer.
Do this from the top center layer to the bottom center layer.
There will often be pieces that don’t fall on the vertical line you are solving, this is expected and they are left blank to be finished in the ‘Finishing’ step
Once you go through this for a vertical line, move on to the next one on the right, while bringing the vertical line you ‘cleaned’ to the F face.
Just repeat this for all the vertical lines.
The second face cleaning would have to take into account restrictions of not messing up the D face.
Bring down a green vertical line from the U layer to the F layer
Use xU moves until a green piece from R, B, or L lands on the vertical line you need (or doesn’t, then move on).
Repeat from the top to the bottom of that vertical line.
Bring the cleaned vertical line to the top, and then bring down the next vertical line that needs to be cleaned.
Repeat this for all lines on the U face.
The finishing steps kinda really varied. For example, the first center’s finishing step would be very similar to the cleaning step since there was very little restrictions solving the first face. For the later centers got more and more restrictive so the finishing steps were more and more like just commutators that switched one piece with another at a time.
So really the cleaning/finishing step is just a way to view coming up with a solution as seeing how can I solve as many pieces as efficiently as possible. And once that method was getting diminishing returns I would switch over to using a method that would solve what’s left if needed one at a time.
The last centers were pretty interesting. I held the centers opposite R and L, and did (xU2 xR2 xU2’ xR2’) one quadrant at a time because the algorithm would interrupt the 1st and 3rd quadrant of the R face on the cube, but not the 4th, assuming you were solving the 2nd quadrant. Then I applied pll algorithms to switch the quadrants around as if it was a 2x2, and left with with 1 quadrant that had to be solved one piece at a time with a different commutator.
Cleaning
Finishing
The cleaning step was just attempting to solve many pieces as fast as possible at once.
The finishing step was focusing on solving the pieces that weren’t solved, individually if necessary.
For example, with the first face cleaning:
Start with blue center with the solved pieces held on D.
Use the F face to work on building vertical lines.
Use xU moves until you bring blue pieces from the R, B, and L layers to the F layer.
Do this from the top center layer to the bottom center layer.
There will often be pieces that don’t fall on the vertical line you are solving, this is expected and they are left blank to be finished in the ‘Finishing’ step
Once you go through this for a vertical line, move on to the next one on the right, while bringing the vertical line you ‘cleaned’ to the F face.
Just repeat this for all the vertical lines.
The second face cleaning would have to take into account restrictions of not messing up the D face.
Bring down a green vertical line from the U layer to the F layer
Use xU moves until a green piece from R, B, or L lands on the vertical line you need (or doesn’t, then move on).
Repeat from the top to the bottom of that vertical line.
Bring the cleaned vertical line to the top, and then bring down the next vertical line that needs to be cleaned.
Repeat this for all lines on the U face.
The finishing steps kinda really varied. For example, the first center’s finishing step would be very similar to the cleaning step since there was very little restrictions solving the first face. For the later centers got more and more restrictive so the finishing steps were more and more like just commutators that switched one piece with another at a time.
So really the cleaning/finishing step is just a way to view coming up with a solution as seeing how can I solve as many pieces as efficiently as possible. And once that method was getting diminishing returns I would switch over to using a method that would solve what’s left if needed one at a time.
The last centers were pretty interesting. I held the centers opposite R and L, and did (xU2 xR2 xU2’ xR2’) one quadrant at a time because the algorithm would interrupt the 1st and 3rd quadrant of the R face on the cube, but not the 4th, assuming you were solving the 2nd quadrant. Then I applied pll algorithms to switch the quadrants around as if it was a 2x2, and left with with 1 quadrant that had to be solved one piece at a time with a different commutator.
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I really didn't expect someone to come out of nowhere and do a solve like this, even if it did take you almost 3 months (!!). Huge congrats.
