the faces of the cubes you see on a 3x3x3 is 54 but if you take it apart there are 20 pieces/cubes and 1 core/center with 6 middle pieces/cubes attached to it. There are 8 corner pieces/cubes and 12...
There are Six independently rotating joints. The whole cube is held together by these. Colored centers are attached to the joints. The edges are held down by the centers. And the corners are held in...
43,252,003,274,489,856,000. only one of these, of course, is the solved one. and interestingly, you can get from any of these over 43 quintillion permutations to any other in 20 turns or less, so...