In case there are any Ender's Game fans here, the capability to understand micro-expressions reminds me of how Ender subvocalizes to Jane. Orson Scott Card predicted yet another technological norm.
IIRC it kept a list of board states, updated the list of board states by taking each one and applying possible moves, then removed congruencies or any state that did not have a valid next move.
The pattern seems similar to your approach that deals with rotations, though in 3D