Professor's Cube
Uwe Mèffert manufactured the cube and sold it in Hong Kong in 1983.
[5] The V-Cube 5 mechanism, designed by Panagiotis Verdes, has elements in common with both.
This allows smooth and fast rotation and created what was arguably the fastest and most durable version of the puzzle available at that time.
[6] Most current production 5×5×5 speed cubes have mechanisms based on Verdes' patent.
Because of its fragile design, the Rubik's brand Professor's Cube is not suitable for Speedcubing.
Applying excessive force to the cube when twisting it may result in broken pieces.
There are 98 pieces on the exterior of the cube: 8 corners, 36 edges, and 54 centers (48 movable, 6 fixed).
Some variations of the cube have one of the center pieces marked with a logo, which can be put into four different orientations.
This increases the number of permutations by a factor of four to 1.13×1075, although any orientation of this piece could be regarded as correct.
Other variations increase the difficulty by making the orientation of all center pieces visible.
As illustrated to the right, the fixed centers, middle edges and corners can be treated as equivalent to a 3×3×3 cube.
As a result, once reduction is complete the parity errors sometimes seen on the 4×4×4 cannot occur on the 5×5×5, or any cube with an odd number of layers.
This resembles CFOP, a well known technique used for the 3x3 Rubik's Cube, with 2 added layers and a couple of centers.
It is similar in order of operation to the Cage Method, but differs functionally in that it is mostly visual and eliminates the standardized notation.
[13] The world record for fastest 5×5×5 solve is 30.45 seconds, set by Tymon Kolasinski of Poland on November 4, 2024, at Rubik's WCA Asian Championship 2024, in Putrajaya, Malaysia.
[14] The world record for fastest average of five solves (excluding fastest and slowest solves) is 34.76 seconds, set by Max Park of the United States on July 18, 2024, at NAC 2024, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with the times of (39.71) 35.10 (33.55) 35.44, and 33.75 [14] The record fastest time for solving a 5×5×5 cube blindfolded is 2 minutes, 4.41 seconds (including inspection), set by Stanley Chapel of the United States on November 10, 2023, at Virginia Championship 2023 in Richmond, Virginia.
