Monday, March 23, 2009

How to Solve a Rubik Cube ? - beginners guide

ive been fooling around with the cube for two days now and after some perseverance and some help from the tutorial videos on youtube i seem to have got the hang of it.

lets assume the top face that is the first face you will be completing is the red face.

also when in an algorithm i say up or right the direction is always clockwise. you will have to picture yourself maybe facing the face on the right and go from there...if you kno what i mean.

up' = up inverted = anticlockwise direction


kindly refer the diagram (pardon my coloring)


step 1 (red) : the cross - DIY


step 2 (blue) : top corners - DIY

what you should now have is the red face complete along with the top row adjoining the red face.
the colours in this top row should obviously match the centre colours you wouldve considered when making the cross.


step 3 (green) : middle row edges
condition 1 - moving an edge from bottom to left
first turn the face you are concerned about to the left.
then do the algorithm : left , bottom , left , bottom , left , bottom' , left' , bottom' , left'

condition 2 - moving an edge from bottom to right
first turn the face you are concerned about to the left.
then do the algorithm : left' , bottom' , left' , bottom' , left' , bottom , left , bottom , left

condition 3 - moving an edge from left to right
first turn the face you are concerned about to the left.
then do the algorithm : left , left , bottom , bottom , left , left

condition 4 - flipping an edge that is already in place
do either 2 or 3 as above to get it out of that position. then put it back the right way using 2 or 3.


step 4 (black) : bottom cross
first turn the cube upside down. you're problem is now the face at the end opposite to red. consider one of the undone sides and rotate it in such a way that one red column is now facing you. then do an up , behind , up' ... that is go reverse ... please use your common sense here.


step 5 (yellow) : bottom row edges
arrange it so that atleast two of them are already done
just do the algorithm which is easy to remember : right , up , right' , up , right , up , up , right'


step 6 (purple) : bottom corners
your reference point is the bottom-right corner.

select a corner that is already in place even though it may be jumbled. if none are in place then ignore the previous statement.
then do the algorithm : up , right (away from you) , up' , left' (away from you) ; up , right' (towards you) , up' , left (towards you)

do it again if the first time dosnt work.

once all the corners are in place albeit jumbled do the algorithm : right' , down' , right , down
repeat this till the bottom-right corner sets. and dont worry about the rest of the cube.
then rotate the bottom (ie face opposite end of red) so that another undone corner is at bottom-right and repeat the algorithm till this sets.
continue this till all the corners set and your rest of the cube that seemed destroyed comes back into place.

1 comment:

Pegs said...

Hi thank you following me on PEGS....can you add a blog following to your blog so I can follow you? I love the rubic's cube blog entry!