Shoutout to Bruh_Vista for beta-reading and providing extensive feedback for this chapter!
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There are over 43 quintillion unique possible arrangements for a standard 3-by-3-by-3 Rubik's cube, which is an incredibly large number! To put it into perspective, if someone were to count from 1 to 43 quintillion at a rate of one number per second, it would take them approximately 1.37 trillion years to reach that amount. This exceeds the age of the universe by several orders of magnitude.
When we reduce the cube to a two-by-two-by-two, the number of possible arrangements is significantly decreased to just 3,674,160 possibilities, slightly over three million. Even this smaller number is still quite substantial and difficult to comprehend.
Shuri found this fascinating. It was just a factoid, after all, but it sparked a sense of possibility. It both stimulated and satisfied the itch originating from her core.
