So I was watching another Rubix cube video and I was thinking to myself, "Ok this is getting old, people are pretty awesome at it, not much left to do." And I was thinking of a variant of Rubix cubing that might be a lot more challenging. Hand someone a solved Rubix cube (or I guess it could be messed up too), and show them a picture of a cube with a specific pattern on it (ie RGB, WBR, YYW) for every side, and then have them work to get that specific pattern. Reverse Rubix Cubing.

What do you think?

I don't think its more difficult by itself (strictly mathematically speaking). Surely it will be even more confusing as the patterns are more difficult to remember than a flat color per-side. Might eventually turn out interesting to rubik fans. It sounds nice.

What is a challenge is start with a solved cube, then apply some restriction to what can be turned. A few examples are:

• you are only allowed to turn two faces.
• you are only allowed to turn three faces.
• Select to pieces that are side by side and those pieces can never be separated, as if they were glued together
• The top and bottom face can be rotated freely, the other four faces can only be rotated 180 degrees.
  Those are just a few ideas but more can easily be invented. You then mix up the cube using the selected rule. If you selected to turn only two of the faces then only those two faces can be used to mix it up and to solve it. That basic idea has helped me get more enjoyment out of my rubik's cube. I have still yet to solve the third variation I have listed above.

Note that not all imaginable combinations are possible (eg: flip two opposite center pieces, leave everything else the same) and finding out which ones aren't is non-trivial. I suppose the only good way would be to scramble a cube and ask someone to get a solved cube to that state.