Try it yourself

The cube that turns with your finger

Before we explain anything, touch it: it's a real 3D cube, with genuine standard notation, no shortcuts. Try any move, paste a formula you already know into Your formula to check if it really solves what it promises, or press Scramble cube and practice blind, like in a real competition. Turn it, break it — it can't be ruined, that's exactly what it's for.

🔤You'll see letters like F, R, L on the buttons and in any formula you paste: they're not colors, they're positions relative to you — F is the face you have in front of you, whatever color the sticker is. If you want the full explanation, scroll down to get to know the cube ↓.

Practice it here

Press any move and watch the cube turn. Drag to rotate the view whenever you want.

Try the most common blocks

↔ Drag to rotate the cube

Moves—

What each control does

Move buttonsThis is the standard notation everyone uses, from the WCA to any tutorial. The letter alone turns that face clockwise; with an apostrophe (R') the other way; with a 2 (R²) a half turn.

r u f

Lowercase letters and MLowercase letters turn two layers at once, and M turns the middle slice. They show up in intermediate and advanced algorithms.

x y z

Cube rotationsThey rotate the whole cube without solving anything, to reposition it before an algorithm. This is where you best see that face names turn with you: try y and watch what happens to the drawings above.

Face lettersShows or hides the initial in the center of each face. Leave them on at first: it's the best way to associate letter and position.

+ −

ZoomZooms the camera in or out. Useful for looking at a specific piece without losing sight of the whole.

ResetReturns the cube to solved and clears the history. No fear: nothing gets broken here.

Scramble

Scramble cubeApplies 30 random moves, like a competition scramble. The starting point for genuine practice.

Hist.

HistoryKeeps track of everything you press in notation. If you get lost, that's exactly what you've done.

Got it already? Then it's time to choose a method: go to Learn and start at the level that fits you.

Now that you've tried it

Get to know the cube

Now for the important part: what pieces it's made of, what each face is called, and how to read any formula on this site. Ten minutes and you won't forget it.

The cube, inside and out

Before the first formula there are two things to know: what pieces the cube is made of, and what each face is called based on its orientation. With that, you can already read any algorithm on this site.

The pieces

A 3×3 isn't 54 loose stickers: it's 26 pieces mounted on a central axis, of three types, and each type behaves differently.

8 corners

Corner

Three stickers. Lives in a corner and can only go to another corner: it will never be an edge. It can be in its place but twisted.

12 edges

Edge

Two stickers. Occupies the midpoint of each border. Just like the corner, it only travels to edge positions.

6 centers

Center

One sticker, and the key piece: it's anchored to the axis, so it spins in place but never moves.

💡That's where the most useful rule for a beginner comes from: the centers rule. If a face's center is blue, that face will be blue once the cube is solved. Don't try to match colors by moving them, because they don't move.

The faces and their names

The six faces are named after the initial of their position in English, not their color. This is the first thing to internalize: R doesn't mean red, it means the right-hand face, whatever color it happens to be.

U L B F R D

You see U, F and R. The other three are behind,
in the direction their letter points.

UpTop — the one facing the ceiling

BackBack — the one you don't see

RightRight — the one by your right hand

LeftLeft — the one by your left hand

FrontFront — the one facing you

DownBottom — the one resting on the table

The colors in the box are the ones this site uses, but your cube might have them arranged differently. What never changes is the position: the top face is U even if it's blue.

Turning the cube changes the faces but not the orientation

This is where most people get lost. The letters that define orientation aren't tied to colors or space: they're oriented toward you. If you turn the whole cube a quarter turn, the face that was R becomes F, and the one that was behind becomes R. That's why so many algorithms start with “place this piece in front”: they're asking you to redefine where F is.

It's solved layer by layer

Almost every method attacks the cube in horizontal slices, called layers. You complete one and move to the next without undoing it. In grey, what doesn't matter yet.

First layer

The bottom layer, complete with the sides matching. It's the most intuitive and the one most often solved by reasoning.

Second layer

The middle layer: just four edges, with two mirror formulas. This is where the first real algorithms appear.

Third layer

The top layer, the most involved: first it's oriented (OLL) and then placed in position (PLL).

⚡In advanced methods, the first and second layers are solved almost at once, pairing corner and edge before inserting them. That's what's called F2L, and it's the biggest speed jump there is.

How to hold the cube

You hold it with both hands, keeping one face fixed in front throughout the algorithm. Your index fingers do the turns on the top faces; your middle and ring fingers hold it steady from behind so the cube doesn't wobble. The less you reposition the cube between moves, the faster you'll go.

Hands holding the Rubik's Cube from another angle

Hands with the Rubik's Cube ready to turn

The most common blocks

Long algorithms aren't memorized letter by letter: they're memorized in blocks. These four show up over and over, and once you have them in your fingers, everything else gets much easier.

Sexy move

R U R' U'

The most used block on the cube. It shows up in the first layer, in the yellow cross, and inside half the OLLs. Repeated six times it returns the cube to its starting state.

Anti-sexy move

U R U' R'

The same block read backwards. It undoes exactly what the previous one does, which is why it usually closes algorithms that start with it.

Sledgehammer

R' F R F'

The hammer. Moves a few pieces around without touching almost anything else, so it's the fine-tuning tool for the last layer.

Hedge Slammer

F R' F' R

The hammer read backwards, starting with F instead of R'. It often shows up right after a Sledgehammer, as its natural partner.

Common beginner mistakes

These six are what most often make someone quit in the first week — and all of them are about mechanics, not lack of talent. If any of these sound familiar, it's not that you're bad at it, it's that nobody had explained it this way yet.

Confusing the letter with the color

R doesn't mean “red,” it means “the right-hand face.” If you memorize by color, the day you turn the cube or pick up another one with a different layout, everything stops fitting.

Losing track of which one is F

After a whole-cube rotation (x, y, z), the face that was in front of you stops being F. Still thinking of the old F is the number one source of confusion.

Not telling uppercase from lowercase apart

R turns one layer; r turns two at once. Applying the algorithm with the wrong layer undoes exactly what you were achieving.

Skipping the apostrophe when reading

R and R' are opposite turns. An overlooked apostrophe turns a correct algorithm into a more scrambled cube.

Memorizing letter by letter instead of in blocks

R U R' U' isn't four separate moves: it's the sexy move, a block. Memorizing it as a word instead of a list is what makes it stick.

Not reorienting the cube between repetitions

Many algorithms ask you to reposition the cube before repeating them (turning the U layer, or the whole cube). Skipping that step is the classic cause of “this is supposed to work and it doesn't for me.”