Notation

Read the moves

Cubing algorithms are written in a short standard notation, the same few letters from a first tutorial to a world-record reconstruction. Below, a live player performs every kind of move with the notation lighting up as it goes. Ten minutes teaches the language once, and every algorithm afterwards reads plainly.

Six letters, six faces

A cube in your hands has an up face, a down face, a left, a right, a front and a back. The six letters name those six positions: U, D, L, R, F, B. They name positions, not colours. Whichever colour happens to face up right now, U turns it, and if you turn the whole cube over, U names the new top. Each letter on its own means a quarter turn clockwise, judged as if you were looking straight at that face.

That last part catches everyone once: clockwise for the face you are looking at. B turns clockwise as seen from behind the cube, which looks anticlockwise from the front. Press play on each cube below and watch where the turn goes.

U — the up face, clockwise

D — the down face

L — the left face

R — the right face

F — the front face

B — the back face

Three ways to turn

A letter alone is a quarter turn clockwise. A letter with a prime mark, spoken “R prime”, is the same quarter turn the other way. A letter with a 2 is half a turn, and since half a turn lands in the same place from either direction, R2 has no clockwise or anticlockwise to worry about.

R — a quarter turn clockwise

R' — the same quarter, anticlockwise

R2 — half a turn; direction does not matter

Turning the whole cube

Three more letters, x, y and z, turn the whole cube in your hands without turning any layer. Nothing about the puzzle changes, only your view of it. x tips the cube the way an R turn goes, y spins it the way a U turn goes, z rolls it the way an F turn goes. Algorithms use these when the next moves are easier from a different grip.

x — the whole cube, the way R turns

y — the whole cube, the way U turns

z — the whole cube, the way F turns

Middles and handfuls

The layer between L and R has its own letter, M, and it follows the L direction. On bigger cubes the inner layers need names of their own: a lowercase w after a letter, as in Rw, turns the outer two layers as one handful, and a number before a letter, as in 2R, turns just that numbered layer, counting in from the right. The two players in the middle and on the right are 4x4s, where the difference shows.

M — the middle layer between L and R

Rw — the right two layers together

2R — the second layer alone

Reading an algorithm

An algorithm is just turns written left to right. R U R' U' means: right face clockwise, top clockwise, right face back, top back. Four turns, done in order, and you have performed the most famous finger exercise in cubing. Watch the notation strip under the player: the highlighted move is the one happening now, and the step buttons let you take it one turn at a time in either direction.

That is the whole language for the cubes. Every algorithm in Learn, every scramble in the timer, and every sequence in a record holder’s reconstruction is written exactly this way.

R U R' U' — four turns, read left to right

Other puzzles, same idea

The other puzzles borrow the same grammar and change what the letters point at. On the Pyraminx and Skewb the four letters R, L, U and B name the four corners, and a turn moves everything around that corner; the Pyraminx also has small tip turns, written with lowercase letters, which move a tip and nothing else. The Megaminx has twelve faces, so it spends more letters, but a name plus an optional prime or 2 still means exactly what it means on a cube.

Pyraminx R — the letters name the four corners

Skewb R — a deep turn about a corner

Megaminx — twelve faces, same grammar

The Square-1 is the odd one out, because its layers turn in twelfths rather than quarters. A move is written as a pair in brackets: (3, 0) turns the top three twelfths clockwise and leaves the bottom alone, (0, -3) turns the bottom three twelfths back. The slash between pairs is its own move: half the puzzle swings over. The Square-1 pages teach the whole method in this notation.

the top layer, three twelfths

the bottom layer, three twelfths back

the slash: half the puzzle swings over

From here, Start here sets honest expectations for a first solve, and Level 1 is written in exactly this language. Every player carries its own moving subtitles, so the notation never needs looking up again.