My journey with the Rubik's cube began 40 years ago, back in the early 1980s. I caught sight of the advert on TV and promptly decided to take on the challenge.
It took me six months, but eventually, I found a way to solve the cube. At that time, I had the intuition that the 'sledgehammer' could be the solution. (To be fair, four decades ago, the world was a completely different place. There was no internet, no readily available solutions, and terms like 'sexy move' or 'sledgehammer' hadn't been coined yet.)
Soon after, life took its course: university studies, family, work, and the cube ended up neatly placed on a shelf in a bookcase. Until one day, when my son, who was 5 or 6 years old, decided to have a go at it. A few days later, the cube returned to the shelf, but this time in a dishevelled state, and there it remained until 2017. (Interestingly, my son became a champion, surpassing my own puzzle-solving abilities by far. He attained a top 10 ranking in Italy's competitions; however, intriguingly, he never seemed drawn to the Rubik's cube, for reasons that remain mysterious.)
In 2017, a new chapter of my life began, and I found time to dedicate myself to the Rubik's cube again. Many years had passed, and I had lost the ability to solve it. With the temptation of the internet, searching for alternative solutions became irresistible, and I learned the layer-by-layer method. Then, like everyone else, I began to strive for speed. I managed to solve it in under two minutes, but it wasn't enjoyable anymore. I was mechanically playing, applying algorithms that were completely obscure to me. That's when I decided to pick up where I had left off many years ago. I was searching for a solution that was easy, and I was convinced that the 'sledgehammer' (now the official name of the algorithm I had discovered years ago) was the way to go.
The following four years were spent constantly experimenting with new solutions, searching for one that followed a precise logical thread and justified each move with simple reasoning. The real problem was that, after all this time, the concept of 'simplicity' had become quite relative.
Finally, at the end of 2022, the DIY method was completed. It used only one algorithm (you guessed it, the 'Sledgehammer')
and the minimum set of strategies. However, the two most notable achievements during this period were:
1) Identifying a simple path to escape from the deadliest configuration, where the last two edges are swapped: 'TheTtrap'
(usually referred to as the 'parity' condition.) This configuration is when the cube takes its revenge,
deceiving those who try to uncover its secrets. (See the three 'Edge swapped' cases in the 'Tutorial' section.)
2) Figuring out how to position the last five corners in the simplest way possible by making simple perspective changes, transforming
the operation, which is otherwise extremely difficult due to the lack of maneuvering space, into a repetitive sequence of simple steps.
At this point, I thought the R&D phase was complete, and I devoted myself to developing this website to make the results public. To put it briefly, it took an entire year.
Technically, the challenge was not to get overwhelmed by an inherently complex system, which was further compounded by implementing an automatic solver capable of solving any possible configuration, providing more or less comprehensible justifications for each rotation.
As if that wasn't enough, when the website was almost ready, the idea of the 'Workbench' method emerged, which was even simpler than the DIY method and finally broke free from the influence of the layer-by-layer approach.
However, the true challenge in creating this website was communication: finding a language that was simple, concise, and immediately conveyed the fundamental concepts.
I hope I succeeded.