Archive for December, 2009

This is a beginners tutorial about solving the Rubik's cube. While learning the Rubik's cube I encountered many different beginner solutions. Parts of these solutions remained relevant as I learned more advanced methods; however, some of these algorithms are no longer useful to me. I have endevoured to write this tutorial using algorithms that will remain of use even as you progress and learn faster methods for solving the cube.

• This tutorial uses Superset notation which you can find defined in detail here!
• First and second layer.
• Orienting the last layer.
• Permuting the last layer..

I recently picked up a Rubik's cube and started learning algorithms to solve it.
I've only been at it for a week now but I've got my solution down to an average of 2:30 1:30 60 35 seconds with a best time of 28 seconds.
My target is 30 seconds but I'm sure that's going to take a little while. I finally hit sub 30 second solves, four months in!!!
Here are some useful resources I found along the way:

• Rubiks.com Solution Book - A tutorial for beginners straight form the horse's mouth.
• Dan @ Cubestation.com - A different beginner tutorial and some more advanced tutorials including information on speedcubing.
• CubeTimer.com - A great online timer for seeing how fast you are.
• JNetCube @ Sourceforge - An opensource cube timer application written in Java.
• Chris @ SpeedCubing.com - a good tutorial for the 4x4x4
• CubeInfo.co.cc - A great blog with lots of video tutorials.
• BlueKnightCubing.com - BlueKnight's cubing site with good intermediate and advanced information.
• CubeFreak.net - Nice F2L Tutorial.
• BigCubes.com - 5x5x5 Parity Algorithms.