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: