Learn The Cube: Introduction

We're excited to introduce to you our new program called Learn The Cube. This program will teach you how to solve the 3x3 cube. If you’re wanting to solve a 2x2, 4x4 or any other cube, you’ll want to start here.

During this introduction, I’ll be going over the program that will help make you a speedcuber starting from your very first solve! I’ll also be going over a brief overview of the world of cubing as well as how to read and perform algorithms. If you’ve never solved a cube before, this is the perfect place to start!

I wanna remind you that we’ll have great cheat sheets for every step of the way. These are printable and are great to keep with you while you learn the algorithms and cases.

The first question you may be asking yourself other than “where to start?” is “can I use the cube I have?” The short answer is, absolutely! BUT, there are a couple of things I’d like to go over just to help. You don’t have to run out and buy the highest rated speed cube just yet, but if you have a really cheap off brand, you’ll wanna make sure it at least has the proper colors and in the proper order, which I’ll cover later in this video. If you have a Rubik’s brand cube, then you’ll be able to use that to get started. If you don’t have access to order cubes over the internet, check your mall or a local retail store and you can easily find a Rubik’s brand cube for around 10 bucks or so. The new ones are even stickerless and are very durable. The only drawback is eventually you’ll want to upgrade to something faster and I’ve provided links to some, but you’ll still be able to get a good foundation from a Rubik’s brand cube.

The cube I use at the moment is a MoYu Aolong V2. If you’re wondering why you should upgrade from a Rubik’s brand, well, a lot of them are better because they have better corner cutting, better turning, they won’t lock up on you, and the tension on them are customizable.

So to learn to solve the cube, there’s a few things you’ll need to know. The cube is made up of 26 smaller cubes, called cubies. There are 12 edges, 8 corners, and 6 centers. Each cubie on the cube is unique and only has spot for it when solved. The center faces do not change positions, and therefore are always across from the same color. This becomes very useful during speed solving. This will become second nature eventually but for right now you can remember this by remembering “BOY”, which means Blue Orange Yellow going clockwise or Red on Right when yellow is up. I also remember the oppisites by remembering Fire and Earth. Blue and green (water and land) are opposite and the warm colors, red and orange are opposite. You’ll remember white and yellow the first day.

To solve the cube, you’ll be learning series of moves called algorithms. They look something like what’s on the screen right now. When performing an algorithm, always keep the face towards you and yellow will usually be on top when you start out unless you choose to solve the cross on another face other than white for some reason. So, to read the algorithms, the right side of the cube will be R, left will be L, the side facing you will be F for face, back will be B. The top is U for upper and the bottom will be D for down face. So from here on out I will refer to the bottom as “Down Face” just to avoid confusion with B for back face.

Looking at the face, a clockwise turn will be denoted by just the letter. A counter-clockwise (or officially, an anti-clockwise) turn will be denoted by the letter and the prime character, and to save time, a lot of people will just call this “R Prime” or “L Prime.” A quick note, about the down face and back face, remember it has to be as you are looking directly at it. So THIS is D and THIS is D prime. Same for B and B prime.

As you start to practice you may want to start timing yourself. There is a nice app on the app store called ChaoTimer that I like to use and there’s a great one you can use on a web browser at CubeTimer.com. On these, you will see a long algorithm. This is the scramble you do before solving to ensure a good scramble. You can randomly scramble your cube to practice but using one of these will get you better scrambles.

The first phase of the program will teach you to solve the cube with just a few algorithms. It’s entirely possible to get under a minute with this phase with a little practice. After that, we’ll introduce shorts phases to help you know exactly where to go next without getting overwhelmed on your way to learning to speed cube.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to check out LearnTheCube.com! Now hop on over to the next video and start solving!