Transcription
So, I always wanted to solve the Rubik's Cube, not just once, but for good. I wanted to be able to pick it up a month later and solve it without even thinking. The thing is, I got more confused with every beginner video I watched. The moment they started talking about algorithms, I checked out. I'm someone who struggles to remember things if I don't understand them, so I built a framework to change that.
In this video, I'm going to share the logic behind each step and share simple stories to help you remember the pattern. I've also split your practice over seven simple steps. Each step is going to take you closer to the goal. It's going to be a fun, rewarding project. But before we start solving, we need to get the basics right. You have to understand the structure of the cube.
Number one: The middle pieces define the face color. So, the first thing to know is that the middle piece on each side of the cube is going to define the color that side is going to have. So, for example, here, the middle piece is white. This is going to be the white face. If we take a look at this one here, the middle piece is green. This is going to be the green face. Now, what about this one? What color is this face going to have? Blue, right? Because that's the color of the middle piece.
Number two: Corners have three colors, edges have two. So, aside from the center pieces, a 3x3 cube has corners, like these, and edges, like these. So, a corner piece has three colors. So, for example, here, mine is white, green, and orange. That's one corner piece. This one is an edge piece, and it has two colors: blue and orange.
Number three: How to hold the cube. The default way of holding the cube is white side down, yellow on top. How do you know which side is the white one? The one where the middle piece is white, right? So, mine is this one, white down. Now, it doesn't matter which side of the cube is facing you. Okay? So, just remember, this is the default way of holding the cube, unless otherwise instructed.
Number four: How to move the pieces. You'll be mainly moving the sides and the top. The best way to hold the cube is on the sides. When you want to move the right side up, you're going to go like this, while keeping the rest of the cube steady with your other hand. To move the top piece, use your index finger. So, here, I'm moving the top piece clockwise, and then use the index finger of your other hand to move the top piece counterclockwise. Okay? The same applies to the left side. Basically, you do this gracefully while keeping the yellow side on top and white on the bottom, and not turning the cube as you're shifting, right? So, white stays on the bottom and yellow on top.
Now, our goal is to solve the cube in small steps. If you want to be able, though, to do this without looking at your notes, I suggest that you spend a day on each step. The idea is to practice what you learn that day, plus all the steps up to that point. This way, you're going to retain everything. It's going to be super fun.
So, let's start with step one: the white cross. Our goal for this step is to create a white cross on the bottom, so on the side that's supposed to be white, right? We can tell that by looking at the middle piece. This is the result that we're going for. But the rule is that the second color of each edge piece needs to match the color for that side. So, here, notice the second color is blue. This is the blue side. Here, the second color is red. This is the red side. So, that's the result that we're going after. The easiest way to get to the white cross is to hold the cube in its default way, so white down, yellow on top. And what you want to do is bring four white edge pieces and place them right here. So, for example, here, I have a white edge piece. I'm going to turn left side up, and now I have the white edge piece touching the yellow. At this stage, you don't have to worry about the second color. Ignore this. We just care about the white piece. So, what we want to do is bring four edge pieces on top. So, now I'm missing three. So, let's look to see where the other ones are. Here, I have another one. I'm just going to bring right side up. That's the effect that we want. Now, let's look for the next white edge piece. Here, I have one, right? So, that's on the bottom. But if I twist this, I'm going to knock out the other white edge piece that I already had there. So, what you want to do is move the top face. So, here, I'm going to move this counterclockwise, so I can insert it right here where I don't have a white piece. And now I'm going to turn this two times and insert it here. Okay, so now we're just missing one. Let's look to see where the other one is. It's actually right here. Now, again, I can just twist this two times up. But here, the problem is this is flipped. The white side is on the side, and I have green on top. I need to flip this. Now, the way you can do this is hold the cube so that you're looking at the flipped side, then move the front face to the side. And now you can insert this white piece on top here. But because I already have a white piece here, I'm going to be knocking it out of the way, right? So, what I want to do is move the top face counterclockwise so I can insert it here, where I don't have a white piece yet. Now, I'm going to turn the right side up. This is called the daisy because it looks like the flower.
Okay, so now we're getting close to our white cross. The next step is to align the second color with the face that it's supposed to be on. So, for example, this is blue, but I'm on the red face. I want to move the blue to the blue face. Okay, now that they're aligned, I'm going to turn this side of the cube two times down. When I do that, the white side goes home to the bottom, where it's supposed to be, and the second color of the edge is also aligned. Okay, so that's exactly the result that we want. We just have to repeat this for the other edges as well. So, this one is red, so I'm going to move this to the red side. Now, I'm going to twist the top two times. So, now I get the white on the bottom, and the red is aligned as well. Okay, so now this one is orange. Let's move this to the orange side. Here, twist the front two times. This is aligned. Now, let's repeat for the last one. This is already aligned, so I'm just going to turn it two times, and I have my white cross. Good news is that if you got this far, you've already done the most difficult part. So, keep going, and soon you're going to have solved the cube.
Step two: The full white face. So, the aim of this step is to complete the white side. The way we do this is by bringing in the corners that have white on the bottom and putting them in the right spots. So, currently, I do have one here, but this actually is the wrong piece because, if you take a look at the other two colors, they don't match the face. Right? This is red, but it's on the green side, so I have the wrong corner piece here. We need to bring in the right pieces. The way you do this is to hold the cube in its default way—white on the bottom, yellow on top. Then you're going to take a look at the top layer and look for any corner pieces that have white on the side. Okay? So here, I have one where white is on the side. Ignore any pieces that have white on top. I'm going to show you how you can solve for those later. Okay, so here is white on top; we're going to ignore that. This one has white on the side, so we're going to work on this one first. Now, your next step is to bring that corner piece to the right place on the cube. What this means is that we have to match the other two colors with the face of the cube. So, for example, this one is green, but this is the blue side. This is not the right corner for this piece, so we're going to move it here. This does not match. Let's move it here. This does match. Matching this is not enough. You also have to match the top with the other side of the cube. So, this is orange, and this is orange. This piece here belongs down here, right? This was the wrong one. This piece needs to be inserted here in the proper way. This is how you do it: you're going to hold the cube so that you're looking at the white piece. Now, my white piece happens to be on the left-hand side. If yours is on the right-hand side, hold on, and I'm going to show you how to solve for that. So, once you hold the cube like this, looking at the white face, you're going to push the top layer away from where it needs to go. And by "away," I mean towards your other hand. So here, I'm pushing it towards my right hand. Then we're going to bring up the destination—basically, the place where we want to insert it. We're going to bring it up, then we're going to bring back the top layer to where it was. So, I'm going to push it back towards my left hand, and then we're going to move the left side down. Okay, so now, if we take a look at the bottom, we have the right corner piece inserted. Okay, so now we're going to move on and do another corner piece. So here, I have one with white on the side. Now, I have to bring it so that the two other colors are going to match the sides of the cube. So, this is green, this is green here, this is red, this is red here. Okay, so now I can insert this. But this time, my white piece is on the right-hand side. So, here, we need to push the white piece towards the other hand, so towards my left hand. This is where we want to insert it. We're going to bring it up, and then we're going to push the top layer back where it was and bring the right side down. Okay, so now we have the correct piece installed here. Okay, so now we're going to take a look at the cube. Here, I have another one, but this is not the right place. This is not red, this is not blue. So, let's move it here. This is blue, but this is not red. Let's move it again. This is red, and this is the blue face. This piece belongs here. So now this is on the right-hand side. What do I need to do? Move the top towards my left hand, bring up the destination, bring back the top, bring the destination down. Correct piece is inserted here. Now we have one left. It must belong here, right? But we're going to double-check. This matches this, this matches this. Again, we're going to move the top piece towards my other hand, bring up the destination, bring back the top piece to where it was, and bring them safely home. And now I have the white face done.
Now, what if you don't have any pieces on top that have white to the side, but instead your white is on top? Well, what you need to do is flip that piece so the white goes to the side. And the way you do this is you first bring that piece above a corner that hasn't been solved yet. So, in this example, actually none of my corners are solved, so I'm just going to bring it above this corner. Now, what you need to do is move that side up because take a look at what happens when we do that. That piece actually gets flipped, right? So now the white is on the right-hand side. But I always have to keep my white cross intact. So, basically, this has to stay the way it is. But obviously, if I bring this back, everything stays the same, right? So the idea is that we move this side up and then move that piece out of the way. So, I'm just moving the top clockwise here, and then we're going to bring the side back down so that our white cross stays intact. And if we take a look at that piece, it's flipped now. Now we can go ahead and insert it like we learned before.
Now, what if you don't have any white corners on top because all of them happen to be on the bottom in the wrong place? So, what you need to do is kick them out and bring them to the top. So, for example, this one is on the bottom. I'm going to bring it to the top by moving this side up and then moving it out of the way. So, I'm just kicking it to the side here and bringing that side down. Remember, it's very important that you bring that side down because you want to keep your cross intact. Now you can go ahead and insert the piece like we learned before.
Step three: The second layer. The aim of this step is to complete the second layer of the cube so it looks like this. So, the way we're going to go about this is to insert the right pieces right here. So, your first step is to take a look at the top layer, look at the edge pieces, and find pieces that don't have yellow on them. So, this one has yellow; we're going to ignore it. This one doesn't have yellow on it. We have red and blue. Okay, so we can work with this piece. Now, your next step is to move this to the face that it belongs on. So, this is red. I'm going to move it to the red face here. Now, your second step is to take a look at the second color and decide which side of the cube it should go on. So, here, the second color is blue. This is blue. This piece should actually go here. Now, you're going to follow something that is very common to the cube. You never force yourself into a destination; you actually first move away from the destination, so towards your other hand. So here, we're going to knock the top to the side towards our other hand. Then I'm going to bring the side that I wanted inserted on up. I'm going to bring back the top so that my red is again aligned with what it was before, and we're going to bring the left side here, or the side that you're inserting it on, down again. Now we're going to turn the cube to face that white piece. And right here, you're going to do exactly what you learned before. How do we insert this white piece on the bottom? We first move it towards our other hand, we bring up the side that we want to insert it on, we bring that white piece back, and we take everyone home. And take a look at what happened. That piece got inserted correctly. Now let's take a look at another edge piece that doesn't have yellow on it. For example, this one. This is red and green. Now, the first thing I need to do is bring it to the red face. Well, in this case, it's already there, so I don't have to do anything. Next, I have to decide, where is it going to go on? Well, this is green. That's where the piece is going to go on. Next, I'm going to move it away from where it should go. So, we're going to push this to the side here. We're going to bring up the destination where we want to insert it. So, we're going to bring that side up, bring the top back, bring the side back down. Now, again, remember you have to look at the white face. This means you need to turn the cube, look at the white face, and now you're going to do what you learned before. We're going to move this towards our other hand, bring up the place where we want to insert it in. So, I'm going to bring the left up, put this back, bring left down. Now, take a look at this. That's inserted. Okay, so we have these done. Now we need to insert the other corners. Just look at the top for any piece that doesn't have yellow on it. For example, this one, we’re going to ignore for now, and I’m going to show you what you need to do if all of your pieces have yellow in the end. This one for me doesn’t have yellow. I first have to bring this to the blue side. So, let's go to the blue side. Then, I'm going to take a look at the second color and see where I need to insert it. That's orange. I need to insert it here. So, first, move away from the destination, go towards your other hand, bring up the destination, bring back the top, bring the destination down. Now, what do we do? We look at the white corner. We're going to push it to the side, push this back, bring this down, and we have our piece inserted. So now, let's look back at the top and see if we have any pieces that don't have yellow. As yellow doesn't have yellow... Okay, so let's repeat that. We're going to bring this to the orange side. Let's move on to the orange side. The second color is green. It needs to go here. Move it to the other side, bring up the side we want to insert it, bring the top back, bring these down. Now, don't forget you need to turn the cube to look at the piece that has white on it on top. Then move this away, bring up the side, move the top back, and take them all home together. And this is done as well. Okay, so now we have the second layer completed.
Now, what happens if all of your edge pieces have yellow on them, like in my case here? What you need to do is insert one of these yellow pieces on the side here, because by doing that, you're going to kick out the edge piece that you can actually work with. And the steps are basically just like you learned before. Right? Just make sure that you don't insert it in a place that's already solved. Right, so let's say here I have a yellow piece, and I'm going to insert it here. Because the moment I do that, this is going to get kicked out, and you just follow the same steps. I'm going to move it to that side, bring this up, bring this back, bring this back down, look at the face with the white side on top, move this to the other side, and bring these home. And take a look at what happened. That edge piece got inserted here, and by doing that, we kicked out the other piece, and it went right here. So, now we can start working with this piece.
Step four: the yellow cross. So, the aim of this step is to come to a yellow cross on the top layer. The way we're going to get there is to take a look at the top layer and look for one of two patterns. The first pattern you look for is a yellow 9:00. What this means is if you hold the cube in a certain way, so for example, if I hold my cube like this, I have a 9:00 here, right? So, ignore any other colors that you see there. This might be yellow, it doesn't matter as long as the 9:00 is present. That's the first pattern to look for. If that is your case, if you hold the cube in a certain way and you can see this pattern, hold it like this. The second pattern to look for is a yellow line on top that's in the middle. So, here I have a yellow line in the middle. The way you hold the cube is by turning it so that the yellow line is horizontal like this. And if you don't have any of those previous patterns, like in this case here, hold the cube anyway you want. Then, what you're going to do is turn the front face of the cube clockwise. Okay, so we're going to bring the two layers that we've done to the side, and the messed-up part is going to be on our right-hand side. Then we're going to bring the right up. Okay, so you're going to see two white squares here on the bottom. You're going to push the top side towards your left hand, so move it clockwise. Then you're going to bring the right side down. Again, you're going to bring the top back where it was, and we're going to bring these guys where they were as well. So, we're going to turn the front face counterclockwise. Okay, so everything is as before. Make sure you haven't messed up your two layers. Now, if
You take a look at the top; we have another pattern. So, in my case, I seem to have a 9:00. It's just the wrong way that I'm holding it. So, if I switch it this way, this is the 9:00 now. Now, I'm going to repeat that same process.
Right, so let's just see if we remember how it was. We're going to turn the front face clockwise, bring the messed-up part to the side, right? Move the messed-up part up, move the top clockwise, bring the side back down, bring the top back, and bring the front face back as well. Okay, everything is still intact, but look at the yellow face here. We now have a horizontal line. So, how do I need to hold this cube? This way, right? Not this way, but this way.
So now, again, we're going to repeat that pattern. Bring the front face clockwise, move this side—it doesn't seem so messed up, but that doesn't matter. We're going to move this side up, move the top clockwise, bring the side back down, top counterclockwise, and turn the front face back down. Now, let's look at the top, and we have a yellow cross.
Step five: Solve the top edges. The aim of this step is to solve for the middle top edge pieces. Basically, what we want to do is get this color to match the face, but for all edges. Now, when you get to this step, you are going to have at least two edge pieces that will be matching. You might have four, in which case, congratulations, you can jump to the next step. But you will at least have two.
Now, when I look at my cube, I don't have any. Well, that's only because I need to turn the top layer to find the two that are matching. So, I'm going to turn this once, and then let's look at the cube to see if we find the two that are matching. This one is matching, but that's it. Nothing else is matching, so I have to turn the top again. Let's turn the cube to see if we find the two that are matching. This is matching, and this one is matching. Okay, so for me, the two matching bits are side by side.
Now, if in your case, the two matching pieces are opposite one another, hold on, and I'm going to show you how to solve this towards the end of the step. But if your matching pieces are side by side, this is what you need to do. Turn the cube so that you're facing the piece that's not matching, and the other piece that's not matching is on the right-hand side. The pattern that I'm going to show you is going to end up switching these pieces with one another. So, the red one is going to come here, and the blue piece is going to come here.
It's a bit of a long pattern, but there's an easy way to remember this because what ends up happening is that you're only moving two sides. You're moving this side—this is going to make an all-rounder, right? It's going to go all the way around, and you're only moving the top piece, and that's going to go back and forth. Okay, so let's do this. We're going to move the right side down, move the top clockwise, right side down again. Now, you're going to see these two white pieces on top. Move them to the back, okay, so that they're lined up here. This side continues to go around, so we're going to move this one down again. Move those white pieces towards you, okay, so they're going to be on the side here. This one continues doing its round. Now, move these pieces to the back again.
Now here, things start to get easy because we see this white piece. We want to line it up with this parent here. It's kind of alone on this side, so we're going to line this up. Now, this white line here needs to end up down here. So, the way we're going to get it there is to turn the top layer clockwise, and now we're going to turn this and bring white down. So, we're going to turn it two times, and white is down. But wait, we're not fully done because we need to turn the top layer counterclockwise, right, to line these back up. Now, we've switched the two, and we have all edges matching.
Now, in case your matching edges are opposite one another, like you can see here, you just need to repeat the pattern two times. It doesn't matter how you hold the cube, just make sure yellow is up and white is down, and repeat the pattern. Once you've done the pattern, just make sure you twist the top or move the top to find the two that are matching. So, right now, I'm going to twist it again, and I see these two are matching, so you can repeat the pattern on this side.
Step six: Fix the top corners. The aim of this step is to make sure we have the right color combinations in the top corners. The way you're going to go about this is this: you're going to take a look at one of your corners and take a look at the other two colors that are not yellow and see if they appear on the side. For example, this one is orange, this is the orange face, and this one is green, but this is the blue face, so that's not in the right place. So now, let's take a look at another one and see if we can find one that is in the right place. So here, this is red—there's no red face here, right? So it doesn't matter if red is here or here, it just has to appear on either side. This is blue—there's no blue here, so that's not it. This one is green, this is green, red, red, so this is actually sitting in the right corner.
Now, you might come across the case where all of yours are sitting in the right place, in which case, congratulations, you can move on to the next step. Now, you might also come across a case where none of your corners are matching, in which case, it doesn't matter how you hold the cube, just make sure yellow is on top and white is on the bottom. But if you have a case like me, where the two colors are matching, make sure you hold the cube like this, with the matching bit on the top left-hand side. Okay, because the pattern that I'm going to show you is going to end up moving this piece to here and this piece to here. It will move this piece to here. It will not touch this one. To get the colors to match, you might actually need to repeat the pattern that I'm going to show you two times.
So, let's go ahead and do the pattern. Basically, hold the cube like this, move the right-hand side up so you see the white line here. Then you're going to knock this white to the back by moving the top counterclockwise. Move the left side up, bring the white piece that we knocked to the back to where it was, and move that white line on the right back home. So, we're going to bring it down. Now, we're going to bring the other white piece that we knocked to the back back where it was, and bring this line back home. But don't forget to line back your middle edge pieces by moving the top clockwise. Now, notice this piece didn't move. It's still where it was, and the piece that we had here got knocked one to the back. So, right now, it's sitting here. Now, if we take a look at our edge pieces, we need to repeat this pattern once again because this is still not in the right place. We have to move this one back here. So, let's repeat that pattern until we get the right color combination in the corners. So, right side up, knock the top white piece to the back, left up, bring white top piece back, right goes home, left comes back, left goes home. Move the top clockwise.
Now, let's take a look at our edge pieces. Well, this one is in the correct spot. It's actually also flipped correctly. This one is also sitting in the correct spot, right? This is orange, this is blue, and this one is also right, and it happens to be flipped correctly as well.
Step seven: Solve the cube. Now comes the best part. We're going to solve the cube, but here's the thing: remember the default way of holding the cube is yellow up, white down. Not for this last step. We're actually going to flip the cube so that the white side is up and the yellow side is on the bottom. Now, the next thing you're going to do is hold it in a way that the one piece that's not solved is sitting on the bottom right-hand corner. Okay, so like the one I have here. This is already solved, so don't hold it like this. This is not solved. I'm going to hold it like this because the move that I'm going to show you is going to flip this piece so that it sits right. The other thing that you need to remember is that you're going to be doing this move that I show you either two times or four times. You can never do it an odd number of times, only two or four. The other important thing is to remember the side of the cube that you're looking at. Okay, remember the color. So, this is the blue side, and always keep it this way. Never turn the cube during this phase. Okay? You're getting so close, we don't want to mess up right now. So, we're going to hold the cube like this, and this is the pattern that you're going to follow. You're going to move this side that you want to correct up, move the top clockwise, move right down, move top counterclockwise. Okay? But remember, I said you're going to do this move either two or four times, so we need to repeat this another time. Right? Never odd numbers, only even. So again. Okay, so that's the move that we want because when you repeat it two times, you bring that piece back down again. When you just do it once, that piece is sitting here. That's why you have to repeat it at least two times to bring it down.
Now you're going to take a look at that piece and see: is it sitting correctly? Okay, it is sitting correctly. If yours isn't correct yet because it's still not flipped right, just repeat this step another two times and it's going to be right. Now, at this stage, ignore all the mess that we're making in the rest of the cube. Ignore it, it's all going to come together. Just make sure you're still staring at the right corner and you haven't moved your cube. So now, you're going to hold the cube like this, right? So, the top here, and we are going to just move the bottom side. I'm going to turn the bottom side and bring another piece to correct. But if I take a look at my piece here, this is already correct, so I don't need to worry about this one. I'm going to move to the next piece that I need to correct. This one, and we're going to repeat that same pattern again. The pattern is easy, right? We need to bring right up, move top clockwise, right down, top counterclockwise, repeat again. Right up, top clockwise, right down, top counterclockwise. Look at the piece and see: is it flipped correctly? It's not, right? Green is on the bottom, yellow is on the side, it's not flipped correctly. So, I have to repeat this step two more times and it's going to be flipped correctly. So, let's do this. That was one time. This is two times, and now everything is correct. I just have to move the bottom piece and align this with the other sides, and the cube is solved.
I hope you enjoyed this video. Comment below and let me know how long it took you to solve the cube. Now, if you really enjoy solving the cube, I recommend getting a speed cube like this one instead of one of the standard ones like this. I've also added a cheat sheet summarizing the steps. You're going to find it in the description of the video. This is actually a great activity you can do as a family. Thanks to my son for getting me started with the cube. Thank you for watching, and I'll catch you in the next video.