Lately, the stickers on my V-Cube have been peeling off, and I became curious: what is the minimum number of stickers I would actually need in order to represent each unique configuration?
I have but a very basic knowledge of the cube laws, and so far I've reasoned that:
1) One can remove a maximum of 4 central stickers, and
2) One can remove at least 9 edge stickers (one sticker for each color to make 6 single-color edge pieces, each group of edgepieces sharing one color containing exactly two single-color edgepieces, and 3 stickers to make three completely colorless edgepieces, as each turn swaps two pairs of edges).
That is about all I can say confidently, and I have no idea how to approach the corner pieces. Any ideas?