Rubik's Revenge
What Is Rubik's Revenge?
Rubik's Revenge is a 4x4x4 version of the once ubiquitous Rubik's Cube. The name is, presumably, intended to convey the image of Profesor Rubik slaving away at a new puzzle dsign in order to get his revenge on those who had mastered his original cube. Actually the name is simply a clever piece of marketing - the 4x4x4 cube was invented by Péter Sebestény and has no direct connection with Erno Rubik.Although the Revenge puzzle appears to be a "simple" extension of the original cube, the extra number of pieces provides for a vast increase in the number of permutations. Whilst the original cube had aproximately 4.3 x 1019 ways it could be arranged, Rubik's Revenge provides a staggering 7.4 x 1045
Rubik's Revenge also has a completely diferent mechanism for enabling the apparently impossible ability to rotate each "slice". The original version available to buy had an internal grooved ball around which some of the small cubes would rotate. There is also a second design that is more similar to the original Cube.
The current record for solving Rubik's Revenge stands at just over 51 seconds. Personally I reckon I could take 51 years and still not work out how to solve it!