How to Solve a Rubiks Cube

Anyone can solve a Rubik’s Cube. It is not a puzzle you work out by staring at it; it is a sequence you learn, in seven stages, and the whole method fits on one page. Most people get their first solve within a couple of hours.

The notation

Every guide uses the same shorthand, and learning it takes two minutes.

• F front, B back, U up, D down, L left, R right
• A letter alone means turn that face 90 degrees clockwise, looking directly at it
• A letter with an apostrophe, such as R’, means anticlockwise
• A letter with a 2, such as F2, means a half turn

The single most important point: clockwise is judged from the perspective of the face you are turning, not from the front of the cube. For the back face, that feels backwards until it becomes automatic.

The one fact that makes it make sense

The centre piece of each face never moves relative to the others. The six centres are fixed on an internal spindle.

So the centres define the colours. If the white centre is on top, white is the top face, and no amount of turning will change that. You are not deciding where colours go; you are bringing pieces to the centre that already tells you the answer.

Corner pieces have three colours and always stay corners. Edge pieces have two and always stay edges. Nothing ever changes type.

The seven stages

The beginner method solves the cube layer by layer.

1. The white cross. Get four white edges around the white centre, each with its other colour matching the neighbouring centre. This stage is done by intuition, not by algorithm, and it is the only part you genuinely work out yourself.
2. White corners. Complete the first layer, so the whole white face is solid and the top band of the sides matches.
3. The middle layer edges. Two mirror-image sequences place the four middle edges.
4. The yellow cross. One sequence, repeated, forms a cross on the last face.
5. Orient the yellow edges so the cross arms match the side centres.
6. Position the yellow corners into their correct locations, ignoring rotation.
7. Rotate those corners in place to finish.

Stages four to seven each use a single algorithm applied repeatedly. That is the whole trick: about five sequences, each maybe eight moves long.

The one to learn first

If you memorise nothing else, memorise this six-move sequence, usually called the sexy move:

R U R' U'

It appears inside most beginner algorithms, either directly or mirrored. Repeat it six times from a solved cube and the cube returns to solved, which is a good way to build muscle memory without wrecking your progress.

Once your fingers know it, the longer sequences stop feeling like random letters and start feeling like phrases.

Where beginners get stuck

• Turning the wrong way on the back face. Physically rotate the cube so the face you are turning is in front of you until the directions become instinctive.
• Losing the first layer while doing the second. Normal. The algorithms temporarily disturb it and put it back. Trust the sequence and finish it.
• Stopping halfway through an algorithm because it looks like it is going wrong. It always looks like it is going wrong in the middle.
• Holding the cube in a different orientation from the guide. Almost every failed algorithm is actually a correct algorithm applied from the wrong angle.

After the first solve

The beginner method takes around a hundred moves. Speedcubers use a method called CFOP that cuts this to about sixty, at the cost of memorising far more algorithms.

Do not go there immediately. Get comfortable solving the cube reliably, without notes, several times. The intuition you build in stage one is what everything faster is built on.

And loosen the cube. A stiff puzzle punishes fast turning and makes the whole thing feel harder than it is.

If you enjoyed working through a sequence, here is another one worth doing once.