ABSTRACT
This chapter reports findings from an investigation of the capabilities of an expert problem solver who not only solves different randomly generated instantiations of the notoriously difficult Rubik's Cube puzzle with invariant success, but also does so with striking speed and surprising flexibility. This inquiry starts by describing this expert's performance, followed by the results of efforts to identify the cognitive structures and processes that produce the performance, and findings from explorations of the flexibility of his skill. This inquiry closes by relating the findings to theoretical mechanisms prior research has identified as pillars of exceptional performance, particularly tenets of Skilled Memory Theory, as well as problem-solving expertise and flexibility issues related to automaticity and transfer. The expert's behavior in the contexts shows more reliance on heuristic search, a hallmark of problem solving, than on the strong knowledge-based methods associated with fluent skilled problem-solving and captured in the explanation presented.
