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I have a 5x5 Rubik's Cube in a similar situation to this previous post - entirely solved, except for a pair of swapped edges: Swap the edges in a solved Rubik's cube.

However, since it's a 5x5, it's the full edge (3 pieces) that's swapped:

3-piece edge is swapped from orange to red and vice versa

It must be some kind of mistake, and I suspect that one of my kids swapped some center pieces. All six centers have removable faces, but no other pieces do. What I should do?

bobble
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RMagill
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1 Answers1

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This should not be possible. If we consider only the "odd-numbered columns" in every 5x5 grid then we have a 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube with two edge pieces swapped and it is well known this is impossible. Therefore we cannot solve the 5x5x5 cube.

happystar
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    This is correct, but as the OP says that the centre caps are removable, it can be made solvable fairly easily. Just shift a middle layer one quarter turn, and rearrange that layer's centre caps to match the corners (i.e. arrange them as if to undo that quarter turn). – Jaap Scherphuis Oct 10 '20 at 10:04
  • Thanks Jaap - I tried your suggestion on shifting the 6 center pieces one quarter turn, and I don't think it solved the issue. It's totally possible that I didn't fully understand you. But after shifting the 6 center pieces, I tried to re-solve the cube. (I wasn't sure what you meant by matching the corners.) Upon trying to re-solve, the edges still weren't fixed. To be more explicit, for the top row, instead of orange-red-red-red-orange (and vice-versa on the other side), I now had orange-red-orange-red-orange (and vice-versa on the other side). Did I do something wrong? – RMagill Oct 13 '20 at 21:13
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    @RMagill: That final configuration you reached is solvable, because it is simply a pair of 2-cycles, so two commutators suffice. – user21820 May 12 '21 at 12:33