First things first:
When you talk about solving a cube, the first you have to learn is the notation. That’s the way how a move on the cube is displayed in your instructions.
The most common way of cube notation is a set of 90 deg turns of one or two layer or the whole cube, represented by letters and the Prime symbol.
Every clockwise 90 deg turn of a layer is represented by a letter, every counter-clockwise 90 deg turn of a layer is represented by the same letter followed by the Prime symbol:
The most commonly used shortcuts for turns on the cube are:
- U / U’ – Up
- D / D’ – Down
- L / L’ – Left
- R / R’ – Right
- F / F’ – Front
- B / B’ – Back
- E / E’ – Equator
- M / M’ – Middle
For a 90 deg turn of the whole cube with “fixed” Top and Down colors the letter y / y’ is used.
The notation with letters isn’t easy to learn for beginners and for cubers with a more visual way of learning (as myself). So I came back to the “square and arrow” notation from the Der Spiegel article from 1981.
To get a relation to modern “letter based” notation I’ve added the corresponding letters to the symbols. For 3D representations I’ve decided to use classic 45 deg cavalier projections.
This is a quick overview of the basic moves that I use in my instructions:
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