>The article talks about the number of possible page combinations as if it's a meaningful indicator of difficulty, but I don't think it really is unless you're

>The article talks about the number of possible page combinations as if it's a meaningful indicator of difficulty, but I don't think it really is unless you're actually trying to brute force the solution. Yep, my first thought is the Rubik's Cube. Pretty much any scramble is equally easy to solve when applying one of the common solving methods, so the ridiculously high number of possible permutations doesn't matter at all in practice. The fact that the white-green edge can start in 12 different spots doesn't matter when you just look for that piece and then move it into place. You take it all a step at a time. A "hard scramble" will barely affect solve time by a few seconds at most. Having the piece in the right spot but rotated the wrong way is about as hard as you can make it, since then you have to "take it out" and "reinsert it" the other way versus just inserting it from elsewhere the proper orientation right away.