How to Solve the Rubik’s Cube: An Easy Tutorial

#Solve #Rubiks #Cube #Easy #Tutorial

Hi everyone my name is Phil today I’ll be teaching you how to solve the 3×3 Rubik’s cube using an easy method this method is easy because it’s broken down into small steps each with an obvious and well-defined goal the method is designed to minimize intense thinking and memorization in fact the only thing

You really have to memorize is one form of sequence in several applications of it after watching this video you will be able to solve the cube and also be able to teach others as well before we go into the method of solving the cube let’s explore some basics and background info

This is a 3×3 cube for the purpose of our tutorial there are two ways to visualize this puzzle first is side by side this cube has six sides each with a different color the Centers of these sides act as swivels and they stay put relative to each other for example no

Matter how much I mix up the cube the yellow side will always be opposite of the white side secondly you can think of the Cubist layers you can think of layers like stories in the building each layer sits on top of one another except for of course the bottom layer here the

Terms we will use to describe the layers goes as follows the first layer is on the bottom and the last layer is on the top the middle one is what we call the second layer the basis for our solving method is to visualize the cube as a

Puzzle with three layers now let’s take the cube apart and check out the components of the puzzle you’ll notice that there are three different types of pieces on the cube the first type of piece is called the center piece each center piece holds one sticker there are six centers in total because the

Center’s don’t move relative to each other the color of the center will ultimately decide the color of each face for example if the side has a red center the entire side should be red when the cube is solved the second type of piece is an edge which holds two stickers an

Edge is a type of piece that fits in between two centers for example this blue and red edge fits between the blue and red centers the third type of piece is a corner which has three stickers this corner is red white and blue and fits between the red white and blue

Center pieces each piece is unique on the cube there will only be one white Center one green orange edge and one red right in blue corner along these lines there will be certain pieces that do not exist for example there will never be a green blue edge as the center pieces are

Opposite that’s about it for background information now let’s talk about how the cube moves each side can be rotated clockwise or counter clockwise you can make a single or even a double turn these moves on a cube can be denoted with cube notation which begins with associating each side

Of the cube with a letter the letters we use here are are L u DF and B our stands for write L stands for left you for up D for down F for front and B for back in this tutorial we’ll only be using our L

U and F a plain letter means a clockwise turn of that face with respect to that face as if you were looking directly at it for example a you would instruct us to turn the upper side clockwise once a letter followed by a prime symbol means a counterclockwise turn so a u prime

Would instruct us to turn the upper side counterclockwise once if you did a u and then a u Prime the cube would return to its original state because the U Prime undoes the u double turns are notated with a 2 following the letter so an R 2

Denotes a double turn on the right face and doing another R 2 returns the cube to its original state direction does not matter so much here as turning aside clockwise twice is the same as turning it counterclockwise twice let’s try a notation exercise for this exercise try

Doing the following moves are you r prime u prime in plain English this string of moves instructs us to move the right face once clockwise then move the upper face once clockwise after that move the right face once counterclockwise to finish move the upper face once counterclockwise if you

Did this correctly in a solved cube 2/3 of your top face should still be the same color repeating the string of moves five more times six times in total returns the cube to its original state there are a lot more types of turns and notations but the ones mentioned in this

Section of the vid are the ones that will be used to teach the method at this point we know how the puzzle works its basic rules and how to turn now let’s take a look at the method and then apply our knowledge to solve the cube for simplicity we will break this step

Down into two separate sub steps the first one is called Daisy and the second one finishes up the cross for good we call the first step Daisy because daisies have yellow centers and white petals the goal of this step is to gather edges with white stickers around

The yellow Center for our purposes the edges with white stickers will be called the white edges this should take only one two three moves for each sticker and it is completely intuitive we feel the best way to teach this is by example so here’s an example of how to solve the

Daisy so to make things easier and more visible when we recommend starting ourself by putting the yellow Center on top we will try to build our white edges around it one by one here one of the white edges the one in the back is already solved that means there are only

Three we have to do ourselves from this view we are able to see three white edges here here and here this one here on the left is only one move from being solved so solving it is very straightforward generally our goal is the goal for the easiest ones first

White edges are usually easy if they’re sitting in this position or this position they can be solved using only one move the second sticker we can do here is this one this one is not in our desired spot but if we turn the front side this way it is one move away from

Being solved this one was solved in only two moves and you can actually think of it as an extension of the first case you had the first move transferred this white sticker over here which turns it into the first case we encountered at this point you will know how to solve this

Piece now it’s time for the third edge we have no more white stickers right in front of us but we can spin the cube in our hands to try to find one here it is it’s sitting near the bottom of the cube this one’s a little trickier and

Requires more moves to solve but we can definitely do it the first step is to turn the top so that the empty space where you want the edge to go is on top of the edge you’re looking at now the second thing to do is to move this

Sticker or this edge piece to either this position or this position we can do that by rotating the front you can move it this way or you can move it that way let’s choose to move it this way at this point this case is really similar to the

First one we solved which was transferring the edge piece directly up however this is made a little more complicated because this piece is already Y and we do not want to kick it out of its position so in order to get past this issue what we’ll do is we’ll

Move this empty spot to where you want to put the edge and then you can see this is exactly the same as the first edge we solved we just do one move and we get it in at this point your Daisy should all be solved let’s do another

Example of the Daisy here as you can see in this case we got lucky again which can happen pretty often in this step this piece is already adjacent to the yellow Center from this position we can see the three white edges we want to solve this one this one and this one now

The piece here can be solved with one move which is exactly what we’ve been doing in the previous example what we’ll focus on next is this piece over here to solve pieces like this turn the front face which gives us a very familiar set

Up from here all we need to do is make one move to finish it off the last piece is also one move off so we’ll do that to complete the Daisy here’s one situation you may encounter while solving the Daisy this white red edge is all the way at the bottom which

Is on the opposite side of the yellow center to solve this simply turn this side twice to get the piece into place here’s one last situation you may run into while solving the Daisy you have the pieces solved but there is something remaining like this white red edge over

Here here you can try to solve it using that familiar technique but you may notice that it kicks out this edge which is already solved to remedy this we recommend moving the empty spot over here which will then allow you to put the piece that you want inside to

Complete the Daisy now that we’ve covered how to solve the Daisy we will explain how to complete the second sub step which is solving the cross the idea is to align the other colour of each of the white edges with its corresponding center by turning the bottom two layers

Together and then turning the front face twice when the colours match let’s go through an example all we must do here is find a white edge and pay attention to the other color on it in this case it’s green so what we’ll do is rotate the bottom two layers together until the

Greens match once we know that the greens match we can turn the front face twice in order to solve the cross piece at this point you can spin the cube in your hand in order to find a new piece the first thing I noticed was this orange piece and it’s already near its

Corresponding orange center so there was no need to rotate the bottom two layers together at this point once these oranges match we can turn the front face twice to solve the orange cross piece now let’s spin the cube one more time to find this red white piece and now we

Want to match the red with the red centre so we can do that by turning the bottom two layers together and once we have that we can turn the front face twice our last target is this edge which is blue and white so at this point we

Want to match the blue with the blue Center which is on the opposite side of the cube so we can turn the bottom two layers together two times in order to make the Blues match and at this point we can turn the front face twice in order to complete the cross that’s about

It for the cross the Daisy is slightly abstract and requires some thinking so make sure you practice that a bit at this point you should be able to solve the white cross on your cube the next step is to solve all four first layer corners which are shown here all

Of these corners should have a white sticker here’s an example of a correctly solved corner you can tell it’s solved because all three of its colors match the surrounding centers in this case the white part of the corner is near the white center the red part is near the

Red Center and the green is near the green Center this corner is not correctly solved even though the whites match because the other colors do not correspond correctly now let’s introduce an algorithm which is a series of moves that accomplishes a particular task on

The cube here it is ru R prime u prime this is actually the same sequence of moves we explored in the notation exercise for review the algorithm says to turn the right face clockwise the upper face clockwise the right face counterclockwise and then the upper face counterclockwise in this tutorial we’ll

Call this algorithm the righty al the righty Alec has many uses in this step we’ll be using it to solve the first layer corners here’s how it works repetitions of the righty alec will cause a corner piece to drop from the top right into the bottom-right slot the

Piece goes directly down our goal is to get the corner piece above where it should go and then repeat the righty algún till it is solved in this example after confirming that the red white and blue corner should belong between the red white and blue centers we shall

Repeat the writing until the corner is solved let’s try it and here you can see that after three repetitions the corner is solved now let’s do a full example to begin make sure that your white cross is facing downward the white side should be facing down throughout the entire duration of

This step here in this example we already have a corner solved in the back which is pretty lucky our first step is to look on the top layer and find a corner with a white sticker we have one here and it’s white orange and blue now

We check to see if the corner is on top of where it should go in this case it is if this corner was solved over here it would match white blue orange white blue orange so once we confirm that this corner should go directly down we repeat

The righty out until the corner is solved make sure you check in between repetitions to see if the corner is solved if you overdo it you might have to do more in order to solve the corner in this case it took three repetitions to solve the corner now let’s check the

Top layer to find another corner with a white sticker there’s one right here and it’s white red and green unfortunately it’s not on top of where it should go so we have to rotate the bottom two layers together in order to put it on top of

Where it should go this is very similar to when we were solving the cross so let’s do it No yes so at this point after rotating the bottom two layers together twice we have this in position now white red green goes down into the white red green

Spot once we confirm this we can repeat the righty out until the corner piece is solved and here it is the last corner is white green and orange and it belongs directly down in this position so it’s already set up for repetitions of the righty elk there’s no need to position it with

Turning the bottom two layers together so once this is set up we can repeat until the corner solved and at this point you can see that you have a first layer that’s completely solved all the white stickers match and you should have a ring of matching stickers around this

Is when you know you’re finished with this step sometimes you may have a corner twisted in place like this or two corners trapped in the bottom layer but swapped so that they are incorrect to solve the corner trapped in place simply repeat the right eoq until it is solved

To interchange two pieces that are incorrectly trapped simply insert a corner piece into one of these positions using the righty al which should kick the piece out and reinsert it in order to solve it correctly if you would like more help on how to fix these please see our troubleshooting video

Once the first layer corners are done it’s time to move on to the four second layer edges the four edges were interested in solving include the red blue the red green green orange and orange blue none of these edges should have a yellow sticker in this step we’ll

Also make use of the lefty version of the righty algae which is this l prime u prime L u this algorithm says to turn the left face counterclockwise the upper face counterclockwise the left face clockwise and then the upper face clockwise remember that an L move instructs us to turn the left face

Clockwise as if we were looking directly at it here is the L move one more time for clarity let’s call the al quie just did the lefty ow like the corners in the step before we’ll be moving edge pieces from the top layer into their correct spots for

Example we would like the green and red edge to appear between the green and red centerpieces this is an example of a correctly soft edge the two colors of the edge matched the center’s that are adjacent to it in this step you will be using combinations of the righty and

Lefty Alex to manipulate the edges and solve them in between these Alex will be spinning the cube in our hands like this in the form of spin right and spin left spin right follows the u-turn like this and can be seen here spin left follows the u Prime turn and goes in the

Opposite direction of the spin right this is a spin left to set up an edge to be solved first look at the edge we want to match the sticker facing you in this case green with the center of the same color you can rotate the bottom two

Layers together in order to match these stickers so for here once we notice that this color is green we’ll rotate the bottom two layers together and match it with the Green Center there are two ways to solve an edge from the top layer you can either move the edge to the right to

Solve it or to the left to solve it for this example because we match the green ones here we can then determine that this edge which is green and red belongs to the left in between the Green and the red centers the other case we

Can have is this piece right here and we can illustrate it first by matching the greens together and then you can see that because this is green and orange it goes between the green and orange pieces over here so this would be a case where

You would want to move the edge to the right to move an edge to the right do this sequence you righty I’ll spin right lefty out there’s an easy way to remember this one first remember which direction the edge should go and move the edge away from where it should go

Then do the AL corresponding to the direction you want the edge to go in it’s over here the righty I’ll spin the cube in that direction so spin right and then do the other out which is the lefty out and here you can see that this piece

Is solved to move an edge to the left do this sequence you prime lefty al spin left righty ugh you can remember this using the same strategy outlined before here’s a walk through u prime lefty al spin left righty out let’s check out an example let’s start by finding an edge that we

Can solve in this example there’s one right here the blue orange one we begin solving the edge by first matching the sticker that’s facing us with the same color Center here in this example the Blues are already matching which is already done for us in very convenient next we

Determine where the edge should go should it go to the right or should it go to the left after looking at it we can decide that it goes to the left since these blues match and the edge would go here with the oranges matching as well now that we know this we can

Apply the sequence of moves to solve the edge to the left it begins by turning the edge away from where it should go applying the lefty out spinning left and then applying the right hand the next edge we can see is the orange green one we want to match the orange sticker on

This edge with the orange Center we can do this by rotating the bottom two layers together this edge also goes left so we can apply the same sequence to solve it now we have the green red edge and it’s conveniently set up for us this

One also goes left and so we’ll do the same thing once again the fourth and last edge is the red blue one we’ll move the bottom two layers together to match the blue on the edge with the blue Center this time the edge moves to the

Right to move the edge to the right begin by turning the edge away from where it should go then apply the righty I’ll spin right and then apply the lefty out at this point all of our second layer edges are solved after this step is done correctly it’ll look like 2/3 of

Your cube is done it’s time to work on the last layer the first objective here is to form a top cross like this this step is different from the cross we solved first in the beginning actually it’s much easier here’s an example of a top cross sometimes you can complete the

First two layers and already have a cross on the top formed if this happens you can skip this step completely aside from having the cross solved already there are only three different cases you can encounter we distinguish these cases based on the pattern of yellow edges

Facing up let’s go over all three the first one is called the line we call it the line because the yellow edges form a line with the yellow center to solve the line hold it horizontally here’s how to do it f rightio F prime essentially we turn the front face clockwise perform the

Righty out and then undo the first turn we made which is to do an F prime it’s very easy and as you can see the top cross is already solved the second case is called the angle we call it the angle because the yellow edges form a right

Angle together with a yellow Center to set this one up hold it so that there’s an edge on the right and an edge on the bottom here we’re going to use a special type of F turn instead of turning the front face on its own we’re gonna turn

The front two faces together so this sequence begins with a small F which is the front two faces together the righty out and then small F prime which is a counterclockwise turn of the front two faces together this is the same as the previous sequence except we involve the

Front two faces together instead of just one face the last case is called the dot we come with the dot because it’s a dot and there are no other edges that are yellow that are facing up to solve the dot perform the sequence for the line

And then you’ll notice that we have an angle so then we can perform the sequence for the angle and this case is just in addition of the two previous cases this step is generally pretty easy because all it is is reacting to a small group of patterns

The next step is to solve the positions of the last layer corners let’s first take a look at what this means here’s a cube with the last layer corner solved you can see that each color of the corner pieces matches exactly what the center’s they are near these corners are

Correctly positioned now let’s take a look at this cube the corners on this cube are obviously not solved but they are still correctly positioned to illustrate this red blue yellow corner is still in between the red blue and yellow group of centers the corner is in the correct position

It’s just twisted the same is true of the other corners there are in the correct position just twisted this step aims to correctly position all the corners at this point we don’t care whether any particular corners twisted or not there are three cases that can happen and you can adjust the cube by

Turning the bottom two layers together in order to get a better view to determine which case you have let’s start with the first one which is the easiest if you take a look in all the corners are already correctly positioned like in the cube we have here do nothing

You’ve essentially skipped this step the second case is where you have to swap two corners in an adjacent fashion let’s do an example here you’ll notice that the red blue yellow and the blue orange yellow corners are correctly positioned you can turn the bottom two layers

Together to get a better view now let’s take a look at the other two corners especially this green yellow orange one you’ll notice that the green yellow orange is not in between the correct group of centers instead this corner belongs over here in the back between the green orange yellow group of centers

And the corner in this current position belongs over here between the green red yellow centers at this point it should be fairly clear that these two should swap so to summarize these two are correctly positioned and these two should swap to swap these corners hold them so that

They’re both on the right the yellow center should be facing up once you have this we can begin doing the sequence of moves that swaps to corners the sequence looks like this perform the righty out three times then spin right and then perform the lefty

Out three times now let’s do a check by rotating the bottom two layers together to get a better view at this point this corner is solved and correctly positioned this corner is correctly positioned just twisted but that’s okay this corner is correctly positioned and this corner is correctly positioned so

At this point all of the corners are correctly positioned the other case is when you need to swap two corners diagonally here two of the corners are correctly positioned and two of them are not the corners we need to swap our diagonal from each other to illustrate

We can notice that this corner is in the correct position and so is this one however this one’s not in the correct position and this one is not in this correct position either from here we can tell that these two corners need to swap in a diagonal fashion which is different

From an adjacent swap to do this first perform the adjacent swap we learned previously you can do this at any angle just as long as the yellow Center is facing up let’s do this first part after this you’ll always encounter an adjacent swap over here you can tell

That these two corners are correctly positioned and these two are not so this is an adjacent swamp and we already know how to do this and then we can adjust the bottom two layers and confirm that all the corners are correctly positioned essentially to do a diagonal swap we do two adjacent

Swaps to create a diagonal swap now that all the last layer corners are correctly positioned it’s time to twist them so that all the yellow stickers are facing in the same direction which is up so essentially you’re going from this to this where all the yellow corners are

Facing up let’s try two examples in this example we have four corners that need to be twisted to begin twisting them we’ll first flip the cube upside down so that the white side is facing up in effect the corners we need to twist are now in the bottom layer to begin first

Find a corner that needs to be twisted in the bottom layer and spin the cube in your hand so that it’s on the bottom right here this is not an issue because all four corners need some form of twisting after that’s complete repeat the righty out until the corner is

Correctly twisted you can tell if the corners correctly twisted if the yellow sticker on it is facing down let’s try it on this corner after two repetitions of the righty al you’ll notice that this corner is facing down and it’s correctly twisted because it matches the yellow pieces around it

Afterwards turn the bottom layer so that another corner that needs to be twisted is loaded into the bottom right spot then repeat the righty algún till the corner is correctly twisted here we can check this corner has been correctly twisted repeat this process until all the corners are twisted

Correctly this step ends when all the corners are twisted and the cube is turned right side up again in this example we’ll need to only twist two corners as two corners are already twisted correctly to begin flip the cube upside down next confirm that the corner

That you need to twist first is on the bottom right repeat the right yoga until the corner is correctly twisted here because these two corners who are already correctly twisted we can skip them and load this one into the correct spot by doing a double turn on the

Bottom layer once this is loaded into the correct spot we can repeat the right eoq until the corner is correctly twisted at this point all the corners should be twisted correctly as a note sometimes all the corners will be twisted correctly after positioning them if this happens you can skip this step

Now let’s move on to the last step solving the positions of the last layer edges is the last step of our method we can begin by adjusting the corners to their soft state by turning the bottom two layers together if you did the previous steps correctly everything

Should be solved except for the edges on the last layer there are two types of cases that can happen one type is when there is one edge solved correctly and the other type is where there are no edges solved correctly the first case we’ll deal with is the one where one

Edge is solved and three edges need to be solved to begin solving this we must first turn it so that the solved edge is in the front once we have that there is one more sequence that let’s just finish the cube for good this sequence goes like this righty out

Lefty out the righty out five times one two three four five and then the lefty out five times one two three four five sometimes you may need to repeat this sequence twice in order to be solved over here is an illustration righty out lefty out one two three four five one

Two three four five and if it’s not solved we can repeat the sequence again and it will be solved righty out lefty out one two three four five one two three four five and the cube is solved the other type of case you may encounter is the one where there

Are no edges solved to solve the cube from here simply perform the sequence of moves and then spin the cube in your hand and do it again to illustrate let’s try it so I’ll do the sequence 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 at

This point I can spin the cube in my hand so that the solved edge is in the front and do the sequence again and the cube should be solved so that’s about it for solving the rubik’s cube if you understand these moves in sequences you should be able to solve any cube no

Matter the scramble thank you so much for watching and taking the time to learn with me for more resources like our troubleshooting guide and some examples of the method in action please see links in the description we’ll also throw in some other cool cube stuff in case you’re interested in speed cubing

If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment and someone will get back to you with an answer thank you again and have a great day congratulations in solving the Rubik’s Cube