←    rubiks cubes

Every method of solving the rubiks cube makes use of algorithms. Each step of solving the cube has a finite amount of possible ways the relevent pieces are arranged. For each of those arrangements, an algorithm has been developed to solve those pieces.

There's only a few dozen algorithms per step (at most) instead of literal billions, and this is because each algorithm is only meant to solve a few key pieces per step. Irrelevant pieces are ignored, and each algorithm is designed to preserve any pieces that are already solved.

So, solving the rubik's cube is just a matter of memorizing algorithms, and then learning when to apply each one.

Algorithms are written out using shorthands for each face of the cube, which tells you in which order and which way to turn each face. Here's an example of how an algorithm is written:

R' U' F' R U R' U' R' F R2 U' R' U' R U R' U R

The apostraphe next to some of those letters denotes that you should turn the corresponding face counter-clockwise instead of clockwise.

This algorithm tells us that we need to turn the right face counter-clockwise, the top (u for up) face counter-clockwise, and then the front face, and so on and so forth.

The beginner method has sacrificed speed in favor of fewer and shorter algorithms, since learning longer ones straight away isn't fun.

I use CFOP to solve the 3x3. It's a speedsolving method, and CFOP stands for the following:

- Cross

- F2L: first 2 layers

- OLL: orientation of the last layer

- PLL: permutation of the last layer

CFOP is the optimized version of the beginner's method, so it's usually everyone's first choice for speedsolving (it's also the most popular--most world record holders use it).

There's a few other popular speedsolving methods (I know jack about them), and all come with their tradeoffs. I'm pretty new to speedsolving, so I'm sticking with CFOP for now.

right now, my main (and only) 3x3 cube is the GAN 356 XS 3x3 Magnetic. I got it pretty recently, and my main before that was this other GAN cube that I got in middle school and took really bad care of.

You're supposed to lubricate them every once in a while so that the internal components don't wear, but I didn't do that for the entire eight years that I had it. So by now it's creaky as sin and almost as bad as a rubik's brand cube, which is why I got a new one.

The 2x2: I can solve this bad boy with 3x3 algorithms. It's very impractical, I'll learn actual 2x2 algorithms one day.

The 4x4: As of 9/5/23, i can solve the 4x4 :)). Fun fact: this was originally called the rubik's revenge.

The 5x5: I haven't actually tried to solve it yet, but I know how to solve the 4x4 and the 6x6 so i bet i could figure it out. also apparently there's only one type of parity.

The 6x6: I relearned how to solve it!! still haven't memorized the parity algorithms tho. who caressss

The Megaminx: This one is actually pretty intuitive if you've got some experience solving a 3x3 (Except for the last layer). Mine is solved (except for the last layer). Even after I abandoned all my rubik's puzzles, I fiddled with this one every once in a while. The first and middle layers aren't complicated to solve, but they keep you busy!

★ great oll guide by badmephisto. groups all cases by different triggers, will probably use this when i start learning oll.

When I was in middle school, my younger brother got a rubik's cube for his birthday. He attempted to learn how to solve it with the help of youtube. He gave up on it at first, or it took him a while. I can't remember which.

Anyways, because I'm a terrible sister, I borrowed it and learned how to solve it in order to one-up him.

Even after I memorized all the algorithms, it took me several minutes to solve it. I was super annoyed by this, so I got into speedsolving. I got a cheap speedcube that was probably less than $10 (but still better than the rubiks brand), and I sat down and taught myself some CFOP. At my peak, I could solve that thing in 20-25 seconds.

When I got bored of the 3x3, I got some other rubiks puzzles. The 2x2, the 4x4, the 5x5, the 6x6, and some ungodly thing called the megaminx. I learned how to solve all of them, too.

I think the only reason I managed to do this in a pretty short period of time (honestly, I doubt I was doing this for more than two years) was because I had no other hobbies and didn't particularly care for school. I'm trying to relearn now and good lord. 7th grade me must have had some insane patience.

anyways I had pretty much abandoned them by the time I got to high school, and I graduated without having touched them again.

I picked the 3x3 back up very recently, in June 2023.

The first half of CFOP--the C and the F--came back to me super easily. C doesn't have any algorithms and F has a few very short ones. So they're easy to memorize at first and with some practice they just become common sense pattern recognition, So I never really lost those first steps.

OLL was a little trickier. I always used 2-step or beginner OLL, since there's 50+ distinct OLL cases (so that's 50+ algorithms to learn if you want to cut down on solve time) and even middle school me never had the patience to memorize all of those. Using 2-step OLL cuts it down to only nine algorithms, but adds several seconds. I do want to learn proper OLL eventually, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Anyways, I remembered all but like three of the 2-step OLL algorithms, and they weren't too hard to relearn. Except for one, which still gives me trouble which is really annoying.

And finally, PLL. the problem child. I forgot every single PLL algorithm, of which there are 21. UGH.

I haven't quite finished relearning those, so I'm going to be tracking my progress in one of the other boxes.

9/5/23

Finally relearned the 4x4. it relies a lot more on intuition than i remember, but maybe it's just been seven years. I'm going to see if i can find some actual algs for the 3rd & 4th to last edges. But I'm happy to be solving big cubes again, it's super fun. I've never really been into speedsolving them, and i'm probably not going to start.

8/11/23

My most recent ao100 is like 25s, which is a full 3s lower than the last one and it's the biggest improvement so far. And I stopped deleting all of my really bad times lmao, which is even more impressive.

I'm also much better at F2L & look-ahead now. That's for sure the main reason my times are dropping, I haven't learned any new algs after PLL

7/23/23

I finally learned the proper sune alg for oll instead of the ungodly thing i learned in middle school that had an even mix of L and R moves. it's so nice....

As of 7/16, I've memorized all 21 PLL algorithms!!

I'll still need to practice with them a lot more before I can reliably recall them, but they're there.

anyways I'm working on my F2L rn. It's BLEAK. right now it takes me several seconds to locate each pair, which is bad. Literally 80% of my solve time is spent on F2L, when it should be more like 50%

getting faster at F2L goes hand-in-hand with getting better at the cross: once I can plan solving the cross without really thinking about it, I'll be able to plan the first F2L pair right along with it. I should add a resources box with all the videos i'm using (mostly jperm, lets be real)(its literally all jperm)

8/28/23

I memorized all 8 of the dot algs, but oh my god I haven't managed to actually properly associate each one with its case. which is bad

8/26/23

It's finally happening. I was debating putting this off even longer because my F2L is still kind of slow... but I'm very impatient.

My original gameplan was to learn the algorithms by the triggers like in badmephisto's guide, but it became obvious how impractical that was pretty quickly. so i just printed out the pdf from this cubeskills page and pasted them all into my notebook.

I'm staring with the dot cases, and then I'll learn the rest in the order that they're listed in the pdf. I've heard that everyone hates the dot cases because of how long they are and how many of them there are, so I thought I'd just get them out of the way first. I don't mind them so far, and I've already got like 4/8 memorised.

The hardest thing isn't necessarily memorizing the actual algorithms--it's going to be actually properly associating each one with it's case. I'm learning FORTY EIGHT new ones. good god.

also, memorizing which way to orient each case before you start. some of the sibling cases require you to orient each of them in different ways and I have to come up with ways to remember which way they go.

★ A lot of my PLL algorithms aren't optimized. I need to find better ones. I JUST finished learning my current ones, so either I re-start right now before I get too used to them or i give my brain a break. At some point I'll put together a list of the worst ones.

★ After I'm better at F2L and my current PLL algorithms, I'm going to work on learning full OLL. TBH that might get its own page at some point cuz its nasty

9/12/23: 14.67s single

9/11/23: 15.45s single

9/5/23: 20.18s ao5

7/22/23: 15.48s single

7/19/23: 22.26s ao5

7/19/23: 19.59s single

7/17/23: 21.67s single

7/17/23: 27.56s single