Planning the cross

The cross is the only step with no algorithms and the only step you can plan completely before you touch the cube. Those two facts make it the cheapest improvement available: no memorisation, and a saving of five or six seconds for most people.

Build it on the bottom

The beginner route makes a daisy on the top face and then drops the four petals down. It is a good first method because every step is visible. It also takes roughly twice as many turns as building the cross directly, and it teaches your eyes to read the cross from the wrong side.

From now on: white stays on the bottom from the first turn to the last. You never flip the cube over, not to check the cross and not to start the corners.

Getting an edge home

Four situations cover every cross edge. Read them as ideas rather than as algorithms — each one is short enough to work out at the cube, and that is the point of the step.

1. In the top layer with white facing up. Turn the top until its side colour sits above the matching centre, then turn that face twice. This is the beginner insertion and it is still the right one when the edge is already the right way round.
   F²
2. In the top layer with white facing sideways. Do not take it round to face upwards. Bring it to the top-right with white on the right-hand face, and tip it straight in: the front face carries it down, and the last turn puts the bottom-right edge back where it was.
   R^'FR
3. In the middle layer, wedged between two side faces. One turn of a side face drops it into the bottom. Turn the bottom first so the empty slot is waiting underneath, then turn the bottom back afterwards.
   DR^'D^'
4. In the bottom layer but under the wrong centre, or lying on its side. Take it out with a single turn rather than nudging it round, and put it in properly.
   F

Planning it before you start

Competitions give you fifteen seconds of inspection, and the habit is worth building even if you never enter one. Fifteen seconds is a long time when your hands are still.

1. Find all four white edges first, before planning anything. Say where they are to yourself.
2. Pick the one that goes in with the fewest turns and start there, not with a particular colour.
3. Work out the second edge from the position the first one leaves, which is the part that takes practice.
4. Hold the cube still while you do this. Turning it over to look is how the plan gets lost.

Why eight turns is always enough

The four white edges can be arranged in 190,080 ways, which is small enough for a computer to check exhaustively — and this site does. No cross on any scramble needs more than eight turns. Across four hundred random scrambles the shortest cross averaged 5.8 turns, and five or six was much the commonest answer.

That is the number to hold in your head. If your cross takes fourteen turns, the extra six are not a turning problem, they are the cost of solving one edge at a time without looking at what the next one needs.

Practising it

• Scramble, inspect for fifteen seconds, solve only the cross, and stop. Twenty of those takes five minutes.
• Count the turns each time and write the number down. Aim to get your average under eight.
• Then do the same drill but keep going until the first pair is in. Cross plus one pair is the real target.
• Watch the pieces rather than your hands. The cross is the least crowded place in the solve to build that habit.