For somebody using a memorized algorithm 52" is rather slow. Obviously if you compare to the average person who doesn't have a clue it seems awesome. But to those who do speed cubing and competitions, or even the "semi-elites" (just to use a running comparison), that time is pretty mediocre. I know personally a guy who once did it in under 10" - he was "good but not great" (his words).
Sure they can. You realize that it is all memorized algorithms, right?
Put the average person who has never seen a Rubik's cube in a room with no internet and they would probably never be able to solve it. But give them access to the internet, they could memorize the algorithms and easily solve it in less than a day.
There is a way to figure it out without memorizing algorithms, but it does take an initial realization. It's very obvious when pointed out, but most people don't get it and especially the ramifications.
It would be the realization that the center pieces on the cube are static. This means that each piece on a 3x3 cube has only one place it can be. The second bit of awareness then is that you need to solve it by layers and not faces.
I learned to do it in 2016, and 60 seconds is sort of the barrier that a very casual solver will shoot for. I think it took about two weeks to get there. Then I got interested in the bigger cubes. Even number cubes have a couple scenarios that odd cubes don't have. Parity issues. My favorite is 6x6. It's the smallest cube that has all the ... steps ... that you could possibly have on an NxN cube. No matter how much bigger than 6x6, if you can do 6x6 you can do all cube sizes.
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