1. Hold the cube the same way all the way through
Pick one face to be the front and keep it facing you for the whole
solve. Never turn the whole cube — only the layers. Every instruction below
assumes that grip.
Front the side facing you
Back the side facing away
Up the top layer
Down the bottom layer
Right the right-hand column
Left the left-hand column
2. Scanning: any side, any order, any way up
Fill the square on the camera picture with one side of the cube and hold
still for a moment — it reads the colours in your browser as you hold it,
and names the side from its centre sticker (white, red, green, yellow,
orange or blue). Show the other five the same way, in any order and turned
any way; once all six are in, it works out which way up each one was.
It assumes the standard colour layout — white opposite yellow, green
opposite blue, red opposite orange — which almost every cube uses. When it
starts solving, hold the cube with white on top and green facing you.
If you like a routine anyway, this order works well:
3. Every turn, with a picture
A letter on its own means turn that side a quarter turn clockwise,
as if you were looking straight at it. The blue squares are the pieces that
move, and the arrow is the way they go.
4. The mark after a letter
R turns the right side one way, R' (say "R prime") turns it
the other way — those are the twelve pictures above. R2 means turn it
twice, half a turn, and for that one the direction does not matter:
5. The bit that trips everyone up
"Clockwise" always means looking straight at that face. So for the
back face a clockwise turn looks anti-clockwise from where you sit,
and for the left face the column comes down at the front rather than
up. That is exactly why the pictures above are drawn the way you see
the cube, and why the app puts a live arrow on the 3D model. Follow the
arrow and you cannot get this backwards.
6. If you lose your place
Press ◀ to step back, or drag the slider. The 3D cube in the middle
always shows exactly what your cube should look like right now — compare it
with the one in your hands.
Want to solve it yourself? Read the full guide →
Four methods, step by step, with every move shown on a 3D cube.
7. Three ways to solve
Shortest finishes in about 20 turns and never more than 22. Two
solvers race for it — one in your browser, one on the server — and you get
whichever answer is shorter. The cube looks scrambled almost to the end;
that is normal, everything falls into place at once.
Beginner solves it layer by layer: bottom cross, bottom corners,
middle layer, then the top. Many more turns, but every stage has a goal you
can see.
CFOP is the method speedcubers use: Cross, First two
layers (four corner-and-edge pairs), Orient the last layer, Permute
the last layer. About 65 turns. You still never rotate the whole cube.