August 10, 2026

Cube drama, but make it cosmic

Show HN: Scroll through all 43252003274489856000 Rubik's Cube states

The internet is obsessed with this bizarre cube toy and joking it could take lifetimes to finish

TLDR: A new site lets people flip through every possible Rubik’s Cube arrangement, a number so huge it feels unreal. The crowd loved the strange brilliance of it, with reactions ranging from “beautifully weird” to jokes that finishing the scroll would take years even under impossible conditions.

A creator just dropped a website that lets you scroll through every possible state of a Rubik’s Cube—all 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 of them. Yes, that number is real, and yes, the comments immediately turned into a mix of awe, nerdy joy, and full-blown internet comedy. One fan summed up the vibe perfectly: “Excellent weird internet thing.” Honestly, that’s the entire mood. People weren’t just impressed; they were delighted by how gloriously unnecessary and weird this whole project is.

But this wasn’t just a love fest. The community also did what communities do best: praise it, then instantly start suggesting fixes. One commenter called it “really fun to play around with” and praised the launch, but also wanted smoother browsing so changing the page address wouldn’t force a reload. In other words: we love your absurd cube universe, now please make it even easier to obsess over. That’s the closest thing to drama here—a tiny feature request sneaking into the celebration.

And then came the jokes. One user nostalgically compared the project to a college teammate who happily ran a program that was expected to take longer than the age of the universe. Another did the math on a mouse wheel and concluded it would take 9.5 years to scroll through every cube state even if the wheel moved at the speed of light. So the verdict from the crowd? This is part art project, part math flex, and part internet prank—and people absolutely ate it up.

Key Points

  • The Show HN submission presents a tool for browsing all 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 Rubik’s Cube states.
  • The interface labels cube configurations by permutation number.
  • The article display includes standard cube move notation, such as "R'".
  • Users can switch between 2D and 3D visualizations of cube positions.
  • The project emphasizes the enormous scale of the Rubik’s Cube state space through indexed navigation and large-number markers.

Hottest takes

"Excellent weird internet thing." — cr125rider
"really fun to play around with! Amazing execution and launch!" — netvarun
"it would take about 9.5 years... if the wheel surface was moving at the speed of light" — jcims
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