Your first solve
What to practise now you can finish a cube, why this method is slow, and what changes next.
By the end you will be able to
- Solve any scrambled cube unaided, from start to finish
- Say where the time goes in a beginner solve
- Choose what to work on before starting the intermediate track
Seven algorithms, and none of them longer than eleven moves. That is the whole method, and it will solve any cube you are ever handed. The first thing to do with it is nothing clever: solve the cube again, from a fresh scramble, with the lessons closed.
What to practise
The bottleneck now is not the algorithms, it is the pauses between them. Three things are worth practising in this order.
- Recall without looking things up. Run each of the seven sequences on a solved cube, over and over, until it comes back to solved: three repetitions for the two last-layer permutations, six for the sexy move, the cross sequence and sune, fifteen for the middle-layer inserts. Arriving back at a solved cube on the right count means you got every repetition right, which makes this a drill that marks itself.
- The cross, worked out rather than remembered. It is the only step with no algorithm behind it, which makes it the one where thinking rather than memory does the work. Try building it without the daisy, straight onto the bottom.
- Not turning the cube over. Every time you flip the cube to look at the bottom you lose two or three seconds and your place. Learn to trust that the layers below are safe.
Why this method is slow
A beginner solve runs to well over a hundred turns. A competent speedsolver finishes the same scramble in around sixty. The difference is not finger speed; it is that this method does several things twice over.
- You turn the cube over. The daisy is built with yellow up, then flipped to become the cross. Those moves are spent on nothing but getting the pieces the right way up.
- You place pieces one at a time. The corner goes in, then the middle edge goes in beside it, and the second insertion undoes and redoes part of the first. The pair could have gone in together.
- The last layer takes four passes. Orient the edges, orient the corners, place the corners, place the edges — with a re-hold and a fresh look between each, and often a repetition inside each.
- You stop to look. Every step ends with the cube held still while you find the next piece. That still time is usually longer than the turning time.
What the intermediate track changes
It does not add a second method beside this one. It replaces this one, a piece at a time, and every replacement keeps what you already know.
| Step | What you do now | What you will do |
|---|---|---|
| Cross | Built upside down as a daisy, then dropped in | Built straight onto the bottom, planned before you start turning |
| First two layers | Corner placed, then the middle edge placed beside it | Corner and edge paired up and inserted together, one slot at a time |
| Orienting the last layer | Cross, then corners: two algorithms, each repeated up to three times | Two algorithms, each done once, chosen from a set of ten |
| Placing the last layer | Corners, then edges: two algorithms, each sometimes run more than once | Two algorithms, each done once, chosen from a set of six |
Take your time over the decision. There is no hurry to leave this method, and plenty of people solve happily for months before changing anything. When you are ready, the intermediate track opens by working out where the time in your solve is actually going, and then rebuilds the cross.
Pick your next track Four tracks, with what each one assumes and what it gives you back. Analyse a cube you are stuck on Describe the stickers you can see and get advice pitched at the method you are using.