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Tyson Mao
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Learning to solve

The beginner's method, step by step.

Almost nobody works out the Rubik's Cube alone. What people need is not cleverness but a method: a fixed order to put the pieces in, and a small number of sequences that move some pieces while leaving the rest where they are. Once you have that, the cube stops being a puzzle and becomes a procedure you get faster at.

The whole thing rests on one idea, and it is worth saying out loud before any of the steps. A sequence that disturbs the cube and then undoes the disturbance can move a few pieces while putting everything else back exactly as it was. Every algorithm below is a variation on that. You are never solving the whole cube at once — you are protecting what is already done.

I have taught this for about twenty years. The version I teach from a stage lives in a slide deck, which is the right format for a room of thirty and the wrong one for one person on their phone at eleven at night.

This page is an outline. Each step below is going to become the real thing: a cube you can turn, the sequence written in notation, and a way to check you have got it. That is a substantial build in its own right, so for now this is the shape it takes.

  1. 01NotationNaming the faces and the turns, so everything after this can be written down.Six faces, a letter each, and a prime mark for anticlockwise.
  2. 02The crossThe first four edges, and the only step most people are asked to work out for themselves.Deliberately not an algorithm — it is where intuition gets built.
  3. 03The first layerThe corners, and the idea of a sequence that places a piece without disturbing what is already down.One trigger, repeated until the corner drops in.
  4. 04The middle layerThe first algorithm worth memorising, and its mirror.Left and right versions of the same idea.
  5. 05The top faceOrienting the last layer — getting the colour right before worrying about position.Cross first, then the corners.
  6. 06The last piecesPermuting the corners and edges into place, and the finish.Two sequences, and the cube is solved.

How long this actually takes

Most people can be taught to solve a cube in an afternoon, and most of that afternoon is the first layer. The later steps look harder — longer sequences, stranger positions — but they are memorisation, and memorisation is fast. The first layer is the one you have to understand.

Which is why the cross is the step I would never turn into an algorithm, even though it easily could be. It is the only part where you are genuinely thinking about the cube rather than executing on it.