How to solve the rubik's sensory cube

8 days ago

Disclaimer: This post is still work in progress. If you want to follow the steps all the way to completion, you should come back in a week I would encourage any rubik's beginner to take it easy, and practice step by step a good amount of times to get confortable with how to move the cube.

Terminology

• Piece. Each part of the cube, we can think of the entire cube to be composed of 26 pieces.

• Edge. An edge piece on a Rubik’s cube is the part where two visible shapes meet. There are 12 edges in total.

• Corner. A corner piece is located in the corner of each side of the cube. They have three tactile shapes, and there are eight corners in total.

• Center. Center pieces are located in the center of each face and have one shape. There are six in total, and, unlike the rest of the cubes, they do not move position. Because they are fixed, the shape of the center cube is used to represent each face of the Rubik’s cube.

• Layer. The part of a cube you turn, consisting of nine blocks. No matter which way you hold the cube, there are three layers.

• Faces. Like all cubes, the Rubik’s cube has six faces. You can start the Rubik's cube from any face, but while following the algorithms with the beginner’s method, it’s assumed you're holding the cube with the flat face up.

• Algorithm. An operation, or a series of rotations, that reorients the blocks into the desired outcome. They are usually written with a capital letter denoting the face that should be rotated, a lowercase i if that rotation should be counterclockwise, and a number 2 if it should be rotated twice.

• Turn. There are two ways to turn a layer: regular and inverted. A regular turn is a clockwise turn, and an inverted turn is a counterclockwise turn.

  In Rubik’s cube notation, an inverted turn is represented with a lowercase i, such as Ri. This would mean that you rotate the right side counterclockwise.

Notation

Step 1: The cross

There are many ways of achieving the cross, so you are encouraged to try to do it by intuition, but these simple steps might help you get there if you get stuck.

Keeping the flat face up, you need to pick the first shape to align, this will be any other face except the down face. for this example, let's pick the square. You should have the flat face up and the square face facing you. Find the flat/square edge piece and turn it to one of the following positions by rotating the left, right back, and bottom faces. (keeping flat on top and square in front). Depending on the position you land in is the steps you need to follow:

Once you have one edge in the right place, you can pick another shape, put it towards you, and repeat the steps. By the end, all four edges of the flat face should be aligned with 2 centers. This step might take a bit of practice and it will help you build some intuition as to how the pieces move around the cube, be wary of where the flat pieces move when trying to put the next one in place since you might have to bring them back up.

Step 2: Compleating the first layer

Keeping the flat face up, now it is time to fill in the corners. There are 2 places you can find the edges to complete the layer, either in the bottom layer or on the top layer but in the wrong place. We will first tackle the easiest case: if the edge is at the bottom. For this example, put the square center piece facing you, find the flat/square/dot corner, and place it in one of the following positions by rotating the bottom layer. Once more, the steps depend on the position the corner is in.

The other option is that the edge you are looking for is stuck on the top layer but in the wrong position. if this is the case, you can think about any of the wrong corners at the bottom as the one you need to position instead of the one you were after, so that one comes down. in that case, you can place it to your bottom right and then do Ri Di R.

Once you have one edge you can pick the next color, place it in front of you and continue until the full face is complete.

Step 3: Compleating the middle layer

Once the first layer is completed, you will realize the second one will only be missing 4 pieces, since the centers should already be aligned.

Keeping the flat face on top, the edges we are looking for should be located either in the bottom layer or in the middle layer but in the wrong position. The best place to start is from the bottom edges by positioning the flat face up and the square face facing you. The next step will be aligning the edge square/dot or square/circle to the square center, you should have a vertical line of 3 squares. depending on the side the edge should go to, is the steps you will need to follow.

You can repeat the steps with the other faces until the middle layer is complete. In case the piece you are looking for is already in the middle but in the wrong position the easiest thing to do is to think of any of the edges at the bottom as the one that needs to reach that edge, so you swap it down and then you follow the right steps once the one you are looking for is at the bottom.

Step 4: Creating the bottom cross

The next step is creating a similar cross to the one we did on the up layer, for this step we will swap the cube upside down so the flat layer is now the bottom and the 9-dots one is the top. Similar to the first step, you can ignore the corners for now.

At this point you might have 0 to 4 9-dots edges already in the ul layer, depending on how many you have is the steps you will need to follow to achieve the cross, as you practice, you might notice how when following this algorithm, the edge in your top front layer (that you are trying to place either on your left or right) substitutes the previous one, so if you have an L shape or a line, you might want to move your up layer to accommodate it best for this algorithm to be used the least amount of times, for beginners, you can follow this simple step as many times as needed to form the cross.

For this step, the other side of the edges doesn't need to match the adjacent face.

Once the cross is ready, you might see that the adjacent faces need to be fixed, if this is the case, follow the next step as many times as needed to put them in the right place.

Step 5: Third Layer corners. Finishing the cube

Having the 9-dots face still on top and with only the 4 corners missing, we will now find ourselves with either 0, 1, or all the corner pieces in their correct positions.

For a piece to be considered in the right position for the first part of step 5, it doesn't matter if all the sides of the piece face the right face of the cube.

If one corner piece is in the correct corner turn the cube so that the correct corner is in the front top right position, and follow the following algorithm until all corners are in the correct place.

The last thing to do is just to properly orient the corners. This last step might make it seem like the rest of the cube is getting shuffled, but that's ok, once all 4 corners are in the right place, everything else would have fallen back into place.

For this step, keeping the 9-dots face up, I would recommend that if you find an edge that is already in the correct place, put that one on the left top corner, and put one that is in the wrong place in the right top corner. You can think about the top right corner as the target to fix, and from this point on, you should not change the face that is facing you, no matter what.

 Run through the next algorithm until that piece is in its correct position. Once that one is properly oriented, rotate the upper face clockwise so the next corner to fix is in your top right corner, see how when you turn the upper part, you are changing the corner you are targetting, so remember to keep the same face facing towards you, no need to change that. One note here, the piece might be in place before you have to do the last bottom rotation, but this one is very important for the algorithm, so don't skip it. Keep repeating the algorithm until the next piece is in position and turn the upper face.

Once all the 9-dots layer is done, you might have to move the upper, bottom, or middle once more to have all the faces ready. Congratulations! the cube is done.

Notes for feedback:

Any feedback that could help me improve accessibility and or instructions in this post would be appreciated, you can send me a message on instagram. Credits:

Although some of the explanations and tips are mine and taken from other guides, I heavily followed this guide on how to solve a rubik's cube as a base to write a guide on how to solve a sensory rubik's cube.

Cover photo by Klim Musalimov on Unsplash