mark writes

This brings up the idea of a "Rubik's Tour". Such a tour would
touch on a set of interesting patterns within a given subgroup,
or potentially the entire cube group. Of course, "God's Tour"
would not only touch on all the interesting patterns, it would
also sequence all the patterns AND orient them in space such that
the number of q turns would be minimal for the tour! I am currently
working on "God's Tour" for some of the lesser subgroups, touching on
say a dozen patterns for the square's group. If humans and computers
ever resolve "God's Algorithm" there is some solace that there are
problems even more intractible.

there's a general graph theory conjecture that cayley graphs are
hamiltonian (i.e. have hamiltonian circuits).

if we take the cayley graph formed by generators
{F, F', L, L' U, U', R, R', B, B', D, D'}, the conjecture asserts
that there is a sequence of N quarter turns that visits every position
exactly once and returns to START. (here N = 43252003274489856000
is the order of the group.)

so the proposed "simplest" solution to the cube is to apply such a
hamiltonian sequence. at some point, in the middle of the sequence,
the cube will be solved! no need to continue with the rest of the
sequence.

i don't think the general conjecture is close to being proved, but
it is known for some special groups and generators. it would be
interesting to know if anyone can verify the conjecture for the cube
group with quarter turn generators. (face turn generators would also
be interesting.)

mike