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Know Your Cube
(it is not neccessary to read whole page if you can understand what is a corner or an edge)
Intro: This the first thing you should know while learning cube. Make sure before starting you shoud go through this page
as well as
next page.
CENTERS
A center is always a center. No moves can ever make a center be an edge or a corner. A center has only 1 color on it and this color never changes. The centers never move, they only rotate. This is especially key. The relative positions of the 6 center pieces will never change. This defines the relative positions of the colors for you. In most cases (though not all since color patterns are not compeltely standard), white is opposite yellow, red is opposite orange, blue is opposite green. Looking straight at red with yellow on top, green is to the right. That defines your cube. Learn this color pattern well.
EDGES
An edge is always an edge. No moves can ever make an edge be a center or a corner. An edge has 2 colors on it, and which 2 colors never change. An edge is only solved when both colors are on the correct faces, not just one of them.
CORNERS
A corner is always a corner. No moves can ever make a corner be a center or an edge. A corner has 3 colors on it, and which 3 colors never change. A corner is solved when any two of them are on the correct face, but not just one of them.
Wait? Not all 3 need colors need to be on the correct face? But can't you have the red-blue-yellow corner in between the red and yellow faces such that they look right but have the blue side on the green face? The answer is no, though it's not immediately obvious, and brings us to the next point to understand.
POSITION AND ORIENTATION
When we talk about the position of a piece, we mean where it is located relative to the centers. A corner, for example, is always located between two centers, and is considered to be in the same position regardless of which of its colors are on those two faces. Similarly a corner is in the same position if it is between the same three faces, regardless of which of its colors is on each face. The two different ways an edge can be in a particular position, or three different ways a corner can be in a particular position, are different orientations of the piece. To be solved, every piece on the cube must both be in the correct position and have the correct orientation. But during the process of solving it, it will sometimes be easier to only worry about one of these two aspects at a time.
Good then. So now instead of seeing 54 colored squares that can move randomly about, you see 20 (moveable) pieces, 6 faces (defined by the center pieces, which never move), and only 18 possible moves. These facts make the cube a much more tractable puzzle, and with this understanding we can now solve it.
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