You’ve probably seen one sitting on a shelf, dusty and scrambled, mocking you with its chaotic patches of plastic. It’s a 1980s icon that refuses to die. Most people pick it up, twist it for thirty seconds, get one side done—usually the white one—and then realize they’ve completely trapped themselves. They think they’re 16% of the way there. Honestly? They haven’t even started.
Learning a Rubik's cube solving tutorial isn't about being a math genius. It's basically just muscle memory and realizing that the center pieces never actually move. If you look at the yellow center, that side is always going to be yellow. Period. Once that clicks, the puzzle stops being a shapeshifter and starts being a coordinate system.
Stop solving sides and start solving layers
This is the biggest mistake beginners make. You aren't trying to finish the "Red Side." You're trying to solve the bottom floor of a building. If you solve the white face but the stickers on the side don't match the center pieces of the adjacent faces, you've achieved nothing. You've just made a pretty pattern that you’ll have to break anyway.
The standard method most experts, including world-renowned speedcuber Feliks Zemdegs, suggest for beginners is the Layer-By-Layer (LBL) method. It’s not the fastest. It won’t get you a world record. But it works every single time.
First, you need the "Daisy." You surround the yellow center with four white edge pieces. It looks like a flower. From there, you line up the side color of those white edges with their matching center pieces and flip them 180 degrees down to the bottom. Now you have a white cross. This is the foundation. If your cross is wrong, the entire solve is doomed.
The four moves you’ll do 10,000 times
There is a specific sequence of four moves that basically solves 80% of the cube if you know when to use it. In the cubing community, we call it the "Sexy Move," though some tutorials just call it the Right-Hand Trigger. It goes: Right side up, Top side clockwise, Right side down, Top side counter-clockwise.
Learn it.
Do it while you’re watching Netflix. Do it until your fingers move without your brain asking them to. This sequence is the engine of almost every Rubik's cube solving tutorial because it moves pieces around without permanently destroying the progress you've made on the bottom layers.
Fixing the middle layer
Once the bottom layer is white and the "T" shapes are formed on all side faces, you have to slot in the edges for the middle layer. This is where people usually quit. They see the bottom layer finish and then accidentally blow it up trying to get a green-orange piece into place.
The trick here is "The Away Move." You actually turn the piece away from where it needs to go, perform your right-hand or left-hand trigger, and then "re-solve" the white corner you bumped out. It feels counter-intuitive. You’re moving the piece further from its home to eventually lock it in. But that’s the logic of the cube: destruction is often a prerequisite for order.
The yellow cross and the final nightmare
By the time you reach the top layer—the yellow side—you’re into the endgame. This is pure algorithms. You’ll likely face a "dot," an "L-shape," or a "line."
A common frustration here is "parity" or thinking your cube is broken. If you have a single edge piece flipped the wrong way and the rest of the cube is perfect, someone literally took your cube apart and put it back together wrong. You cannot solve a single flipped edge through legal moves. It’s mathematically impossible.
The final steps involve:
- Getting the yellow cross.
- Siding the yellow edges so they match the side centers.
- Positioning the corners in their correct spots (even if they're rotated wrong).
- The final rotation.
That last step is the scariest. You hold the cube upside down and perform that four-move sequence repeatedly until a corner is solved. The rest of the cube will look like a total disaster. You will feel like you’ve ruined everything. Just keep going. If you finish the cycle for all four corners, the cube magically knits itself back together on the very last turn.
Why speedcubing is a different beast entirely
If you get down to a two-minute solve, you’ll get bored. That's when you move to the CFOP method (Cross, F2L, OLL, PLL). This is what the pros use to hit sub-10 second times. Instead of solving the first layer and then the second, they solve them simultaneously (F2L).
It requires learning about 78 different algorithms just for the last layer. It’s intense. It’s also why high-end cubes like those from GAN or MoYu cost $50 while the one at the drugstore costs $10. The expensive ones have magnets. These magnets help the layers snap into place so you don't "lock up" when you're turning at five moves per second.
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Taking the next steps
Don't try to memorize everything in one sitting. Your brain will melt.
- Master the Cross: Spend a whole day just making the white cross efficiently.
- Slow down your turns: "Lookahead" is a real skill. If you turn slower, you can see where the next piece is going.
- Use a timer: Download an app like CSTimer. It’s the industry standard.
- Lubricate your cube: If it feels crunchy, a drop of silicone-based lube makes a world of difference.
- Learn Notation: You need to know what U, D, L, R, F, and B mean. Without notation, you can't read advanced guides.
The first time you solve it without looking at a cheat sheet is a genuine rush. It’s not about being "smart," it’s about persistence. Once you've done it once, you've joined a club that most people think is impossible to get into.