Sunday 6 September 2026 Rebuilt nightly from the WCA's official results · export of 6 September 2026 · About
The Middle Three
Learn → Level 4

Learn · Level 4

Getting faster

You can already solve the cube; the full system is on the shelf next door. What separates a minute from twenty seconds is not braver fingers. It is planning, reading ahead, and practising the right things.

Everything before this point added knowledge: steps, tools, cases. From here on, speed comes from changing how you use what you already know. Watch a fast solver and the hands are almost the least of it. They plan the first stage before the timer starts, they read each case while the previous one is still being solved, and they practise the weak spots rather than the whole solve.

The four pages below take those habits one at a time. None of them needs a single new algorithm.

Two numbers set the scene. Across everyone who has ever recorded an official 3×3 average, the median personal best is 28 seconds, and 30 in every 100 have broken twenty. Fast is rarer than the internet makes it look, and every one of those solvers started by fumbling a white cross.

8
moves solve any cross. Of the 190,080 ways the four cross pieces can scatter, 82% fall in six moves or fewer, and only 102 positions need all eight.