Cedric Beust (@cbeust), January 2003
A couple of weeks ago at a party, I came in contact with a Rubik's cube. It's not that I hadn't seen one in a long time (my very own faithful cube has been in my possession for over twenty years now), but for some reason, playing with that one revived in me the will to solve it again.
I used to be crazy about the Rubik's cube, back in high school something like twenty years ago. We were running contests and I was able to solve it in a minute overall. Not stellar, but decent. There was one major difference, though: back then, we didn't have the Internet. I had gotten my solution in various magazines and I had added my own maneuvers in an attempt to speed up the process and beat my classmates.
When I looked it up on the Internet, I wasn't really surprised to find a wealth of information. Much more than anything I had ever read on the topic. There are all kinds of methodologies out there and a lot of people who took the time to put up Web pages have used various ways to reach their own solution, often assisted by a computer (see the links section below for details).
But at this point, I'm not really interested in speed cubing. I just want a solution that's easy to memorize so I can revive the old feeling of beating the cube without reading a paper. None of the solutions I read were really aimed at easy memorization, so I created this page.
You will find out that the first half of this solution is simple common sense and even though I took the trouble of enumerating each maneuver for the sake of completeness, you only need to memorize the maneuvers explained in the second part of this solution. I am confident that the first part will stick with you since I remembered how to get that part myself even after twenty years of inactivity.
Therefore, I split this solution in two parts: the easy one (in which you build the first two layers except for one edge) and the harder one, where you complete the cube using more complex maneuvers that you need to learn by heart.
As as side note, I focused on providing the maneuvers that you absolutely need to know in order to finish the cube (a total of eight maneuvers). For every step of the second part, you can find on the Web similar maneuvers that will solve this stage when the cubies are in different locations. I didn't include them in this solution so you are not overwhelmed or discouraged by the amount of what you need to learn, but once you are familiar with the maneuvers below to the point where you no longer need to think, I strongly recommend you follow the links I provide at the end of this page: they will teach you more specialized maneuvers that will greatly speed up your cube solving.
As a final thought, it is just amazing how finger memory works. It took me a couple of hours of practice to have this solution totally memorized in my fingers. No more thinking in terms of "U" and "R prime", it just comes automatically. Give it a try, practice these maneuvers over and over (even on an unmade cube), and you will learn it in no time.
I am using the popular notation that I found pretty much everywhere. Each side is represented by its initial: Front, Back, Left, Right, Up, Down. A letter by itself (e.g. "R") means "turn this side clockwise". A letter followed by a prime (e.g. "F'") means "turn this side counter-clockwise. Finally, a letter followed by 2 (e.g. "L2", it should really be a square, not a 2) means "turn this side 180 degrees". If you have any doubts, the applets will clear up any confusion you might feel.
One last note before we begin: I shamelessly stole the slick cube applet from Lars, whose Web site you can find in the links section. Be sure to check out his Rubik's page, there is a lot of information contained there.
And now, let's start.
This is the easy part where you could pretty much guess all these moves by yourself. Before you can start, you need to pick a side and place the edges correctly so that the cube shows a cross. I will skip this part because it's trivial, but if you disagree, please let me know and I will add a step-by-step description of how to get there.
All four edges are in place, now we want to position three corners so that we end up with the first layer finished except for one corner. Move a corner under its final position and apply one of the three following maneuvers:
| F D F' | F' D' F | F' D2 F D F' D' F |
Note that even though the third maneuver looks intimidating, it's actually quite simple: we can't place the corner directly in its final location if it's facing downwards, so we move the cube in order to reach one of the first two scenarios, which we can then solve.
At the end of this step, your cube will look like this:
We will use this missing corner (also called "working corner") to install the second layer.
Our goal in this phase is to bring the cube with the first two layers complete except for
one corner and one edge:
To achieve this, we are going to position three middle edge cubies using the
working corner. For each edge, you have two possible configurations.
Bring the working corner on top of the edge you want to install, and use one of
the two following maneuvers:
| F' D F | L D' L' |
Repeat these maneuvers for the three cubies until you reach the point where the two layers are finished except for one corner and the edge below it. Then use
the maneuvers shown in 1a) to position the final corner of the first layer.
Your cube should now look like this:
From this point on, we're going to need formulas to finish the cube. Until then, all the maneuvers were pretty straightforward and you can even reconstitute them yourself, but you are going to have to memorize what follows from this point on.
Turn the cube around and bring the missing edge near its final position.
Depending on where the missing edge is, use one of the two following maneuvers:
| U F U' F' U' L' U L | U' L' U L U F U' F' |
Now we only have one layer left. The first step is to orient all four
edges correctly. The following maneuvers take care of orienting pairs of
edges, either adjacent, or opposed:
| F U R U' R' F' | F R U R' U' F' |
Now that the edges are oriented correctly, we need to put them in their final
location. The following maneuver switches the two edges opposed to you:
| U R' U2 R U R' U R |
We are done with the edges. Next, we need to position the corners to their final position (not necessarily well oriented). The following maneuver leaves the corner at the northwest corner untouched but rotates the other three counter-clockwise. You might have to make this maneuver several times until you have placed all four corners.
| U L U' R' U L' U' R |
Bring the corner to orient in the top right position and run this formula over and over again until the corner has the right orientation. Then move the upper layer to bring the next corner in the top right position and repeat.
| (2e) (R F' R' F) (R F' R' F) U' (R F' R' F) (R F' R' F) (R F' R' F) U |
In the example above, we had to run the formula twice to orient the first corner. Then we rotate the top side to bring the next corner in position. This one requires three formulas to put it in place. Then we rotate the top back.
There are many other pages available and I won't enumerate them all here since Google does a much better job at it.
You can leave a comment about this solution or go back to my home page.