You pick it up. It’s a mess. Colors are scattered everywhere like a dropped bag of Skittles, and your first instinct is to fix one side. Most people do this. They spend twenty minutes rotating layers until the white face is perfect. Then they look at the rest of the cube and realize they’ve actually made things worse for the other five faces. Solving a Rubik's cube all sides isn't about fixing one color at a time; it’s about understanding how the pieces move in 3D space.
It’s frustrating.
Ernő Rubik, a Hungarian architecture professor, didn't even know if his own invention could be solved when he built the first prototype in 1974. It took him a full month to figure out his own puzzle. Think about that. The guy who made it was stumped. He wanted a way to model three-dimensional movement for his students, but he ended up creating a global obsession that has lasted over fifty years. If you’re struggling to get every side lined up, you’re basically following in the footsteps of a literal genius who was also once totally lost.
The Layer-By-Layer Reality of Rubik's Cube All Sides
Forget the "side-by-side" mentality. If you try to solve the red side, then the blue side, you will constantly break what you just finished. The secret to getting a Rubik's cube all sides matched up is working in layers.
Think of the cube like a three-story building. You build the foundation (the bottom layer), then the walls (the middle layer), and finally the roof (the top layer).
The Foundation and the "Cross"
Everything starts with a cross. Most speedcubers, like Feliks Zemdegs or Max Park, usually start with white. But here is the kicker: the center pieces don't move. They are fixed. If the center square is yellow, that side must be yellow. You aren't moving the centers; you are moving everything else around them.
When you form that initial cross, the "arms" of the cross have to match the adjacent center colors. If you have a white-red edge piece, it has to sit between the white center and the red center. If it doesn't, you’ll never solve the whole cube. It's a common trap. People get the white cross and feel like heroes, but if the side colors don't match, the cube is technically still "broken."
Why the Middle Layer is a Turning Point
Once the first layer is done—corners and all—you flip the cube over. Now you're looking for edge pieces that don't have any yellow on them (assuming white is on the bottom). This is where the first real "algorithms" come in. An algorithm is just a fancy word for a sequence of moves that moves one piece without ruining the rest.
It feels like magic. You perform a set of eight moves, and suddenly a piece from the top jumps into the middle row. You do this four times. Now, two-thirds of the Rubik's cube all sides are looking organized. The tension starts to build here because one wrong turn can explode the progress you've made on the bottom.
The Mental Block: Why the Top Layer is Different
The last layer is a nightmare for beginners.
In the first two layers, you have a lot of "empty" space to move pieces around. But by the time you get to the top, almost the entire cube is solved. You have no room to breathe. This is where most people quit. They see the bottom two layers are perfect, they try to fix the top, they mess up a move, and suddenly the whole cube is scrambled again.
Honestly, it’s heartbreaking.
To solve the final part of a Rubik's cube all sides, you have to use sequences that temporarily break the bottom layers and then put them back together. You’re essentially juggling. You throw the pieces into the air, rearrange them, and catch them before they hit the ground. You have to follow the steps:
- Create the yellow cross.
- Align the cross edges.
- Put the corners in the right spots (even if they're flipped wrong).
- Twist the corners to finish the job.
The very last step is the scariest. You have to keep doing the same four moves—R' D' R D—over and over. The cube will look like a total disaster while you do this. Your brain will scream at you to stop. But if you trust the math, the cube snaps into place on the very last turn.
Beyond the Basics: Different Methods for All Sides
Not everyone solves it the same way. The method I just described is the "Beginner's Method." It's reliable but slow. If you want to see someone solve a Rubik's cube all sides in under five seconds, they aren't using that.
The CFOP Method
This is what the pros use. It stands for Cross, F2L (First Two Layers), OLL (Orientation of the Last Layer), and PLL (Permutation of the Last Layer). Instead of doing the first layer corners and then the middle layer edges, they do them at the same time. They find a corner and an edge, "pair" them up, and slot them in together. It’s incredibly efficient.
Jessica Fridrich popularized this in the 1990s, and it’s been the gold standard ever since. But there’s a catch: you have to memorize dozens, sometimes hundreds, of different move sequences to handle every possible scramble.
The Roux Method
Then there are the rebels. The Roux method doesn't care about the "cross." Instead, you build two 1x2x3 blocks on the sides. It uses way fewer moves than CFOP and relies heavily on "M-slices" (moving the middle slice of the cube). It’s elegant. It’s fluid. It also feels completely alien if you learned the traditional way.
Surprising Facts About the 3x3 Cube
There are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible positions for a standard Rubik's cube. That is 43 quintillion. If you had a separate cube for every single possible permutation, you could cover the entire surface of the Earth... including the oceans... in a layer of cubes 273 units thick.
Yet, no matter how scrambled it is, any Rubik's cube all sides can be solved in 20 moves or fewer. This is known as "God's Number." In 2010, a team of researchers using Google's infrastructure finally proved this after decades of speculation. Most people take 50 or 60 moves to solve it. A computer only needs 20.
It’s also worth noting that the "all sides" aspect isn't just about color. There are "sudoku cubes," "calendar cubes," and "picture cubes." On a picture cube, solving the colors isn't enough; you also have to make sure the orientation of the center pieces is correct. This adds a whole new layer of frustration because the standard algorithms often leave the centers rotated 90 degrees.
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Common Misconceptions That Hold You Back
People think you need to be a math genius. You don't. You need muscle memory.
When you see a speedcuber, they aren't thinking "Okay, now I need to move the Right face clockwise." Their fingers are just moving. It's like typing on a keyboard or playing an instrument. If you ask a pro to write down the moves they just did, they might actually struggle to do it without holding a cube in their hands. The knowledge is in the tendons, not just the prefrontal cortex.
Another myth? "I used to solve it by peeling the stickers off."
Don't be that person. First of all, the stickers never stay sticky after you peel them. Secondly, modern "speedcubes" don't even have stickers; the plastic itself is colored. If you want to "cheat," you're better off taking the cube apart with a screwdriver and putting it back together. But honestly, learning the moves is more satisfying.
Practical Steps to Mastering the Cube
If you really want to get a Rubik's cube all sides solved without throwing it against a wall, here is the path forward:
- Buy a "Speedcube": Do not use the official Rubik's brand cube from 1980. They are stiff and loud. Brands like MoYu, GAN, or QiYi make cubes that turn with the flick of a finger. It makes the learning process 10x more enjoyable.
- Learn the Notation: You need to know what R, L, U, D, F, and B mean. (Right, Left, Up, Down, Front, Back). An apostrophe (like R') means move it counter-clockwise. This is the universal language of cubing.
- Master the "Trigger" moves: There are two short sequences called the "Sexy Move" (R U R' U') and the "Sledgehammer" (R' F R F'). Almost every advanced solve is just these two moves buried inside other sequences.
- Focus on one side... then stop: Once you can do the white cross and corners consistently, stop and look at how those pieces interact with the middle layer. Don't rush to the end.
- Use Video Tutorials: Reading a diagram is hard. Watching someone like J Perm or Feliks Zemdegs on YouTube allows you to see the "finger tricks"—the specific ways they hold the cube to make it spin faster.
The Rubik's cube is a metaphor for problem-solving. You can't fix the top without temporarily messing up the bottom. You have to be okay with a little chaos to reach the order. Once you solve it for the first time, that 43 quintillion number doesn't seem so scary anymore. You’ve mastered a piece of engineering that has baffled millions.
Start with the cross. Keep your centers aligned. And for heaven's sake, don't peel the stickers.