The final stage of the beginner's Rubik's Cube method covers edge permutation, which has only four cases but needs just two algorithms. The video walks through a complete solve from scramble to finish, showing white cross, corner insertion, edge pairing, and orientation fixes, with typical beginner times of 3 to 4 minutes.
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To finish solving the Rubik's Cube, we only have to permute the edges. Permute, i.e., move around. So we only have 4 cases in this stage, but you actually only need to know 2 cases. You actually only need to know 1 case, but these 2 cases are very similar, so you won't even know the difference. For the sake of speed, you should know both of them. So forget about these 2 for a while. These 2 cases have both 1 edge already solved, and they each cycle 3 edges around the cube. This one cycles edges clockwise, this one cycles edges counterclockwise. To solve the clockwise cycle, hold the cube so that the solved edge is in the back. Do the following algorithm to solve The counterclockwise cycle: hold the cube like this with the solved edge in the back like before, do the following algorithm. Now similarly as we did with the corners, to solve these two cases, we're going to just apply one of these two cases to reduce it to a case that you do know already, one of these two as well. So this one is to swap these two edges, adjacent edge swap. This one needs to swap two opposite edges, so opposite edge swap. I'm going to show one of these because it's pretty simple. You only hold the cube whichever way you want and you apply one of the algorithms I just showed you. So for example, I'm applying the first one. This will reduce your cube to the case that I just showed you. This is a clockwise edge cycle. Hold the cube like this, and that will solve it. And it's similar for this case as well. So there you have it. This is the Beginner's Method of solving the Rubik's Cube. With this method you will average around 3 or 4 minutes in the beginning, but you can get down to as good as 1 minute or so. Then you can start looking into some more advanced methods. You can also watch my video "How to become a speedcuber," which I'll link to in the video description. The video goes over some Rubik's Cube concepts which I think you should probably know about. If you are new to cubing, you will find most of it near the end a little confusing, especially when I go over some very advanced methods, but at the end I mention some things you should know about, such as lubrication, timers, and things like that. I give out also some helpful links. Now, a link to an HTML version of this beginner's method can also be found in the video description. The website I link to is very helpful, and I recommend you bookmark it and have a look around. It lists all the algorithms and cases, and you can print it out and learn the method that way as well. If you found some part of this video hard to understand, please post it in the comments to request a clarification. All clarifications that I think are important, uh, I will update in the video description. So before you ask, check the description to see if similar questions were not asked before. Uh, if you have any other comments, post those as well. I like feedback. Other than that, I hope this video was helpful to you. I have a bunch of other videos that some people found very helpful, but most of the things I teach are advanced methods that you should not be looking into until you are well below 1-minute averages. Other than that, good luck with the memorization. It's not that bad, it just takes a little patience. Just simply go stage by stage and memorize algorithms one by one. Take care, bye-bye. Okay, so now we're going to go through an example solve. So hold the cube like this, with yellow on top and orange in the front. And do the following scrambling algorithm: R F L U' F U' F2 B R D' U2 F2 R U B2 D' R2 F2 R2 U F2 B2 D' U B. Okay, so we're going to do the white cross first. We've got one edge already solved, well almost, we just have to pair it up with the center. Okay, so we just solved one edge. So let's see, I'm looking for more edges that are easy to solve. This green needs one move to be placed up on the top like this. However, this green edge has to go here because this is the green center, so it needs to come here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a U2. Now I'm going to place that green, and now U2 again to adjust the cross. Now we have two solved. This one can be solved very easily, just like this, and we have this red edge which needs to come here. So what I can do, it's here, I can just rotate the bottom layer twice to bring it under, to pair that with the center and bring it up, doing an L2. So we're going for our corners now. This corner, blue-orange, between the orange and the blue side, needs to come here. Do the algorithm: R U2 R' U' R U R'. Okay, so I solved it. This corner, blue-red, has to come here, so between the blue and the red, R U R'. Now we don't have any more corners on the top layer, so we need to bring one down. This corner, we have to pretend that we want to put this one in, so we just do like R U R', for example, put it over where it needs to go, R U R'. Same story with this corner, pretend we want to put this one in, R U R', we pop this one out and do the algorithm for this one. R U2 R' U R U R'. We are now going to edges. So we have this blue-orange edge, so we pair it up with the center like this, we put it on the right, we need to shoot it to the back now, so do the algorithm R U R U R U' R' U' R'. And that solves that edge. This edge, red-green, pair it up with the center, we need to shoot it to the front, so we do R' U' I' U' R' U R U R. Next edge, here, pair it up, put it on the right, need to shoot to the front, R' U' I' U' R' U R U R. Last edge, pair it up, need to shoot it to the back, So we have R U R U R U' R' U' R'. So now we have all the first layers finished. So now we go on to do the edge orientation. So we have two edges that need flipping, these two. They're adjacent, so we hold the cube with them on the front on the right like this, do the algorithm F U R U' F'. R' F'. Okay, so now we have this case. For this one, we hold it like this and we do the first algorithm, which is R' U2 R U R' U R, and we've reduced it to a fish pattern case, which we can handle. So this is the first case as well, so just do R' U2 R U R' U R. Okay. So now we are done that. We now proceed to do the corners. So I'm looking for two similar stickers. I don't see anything, so unfortunately we're going to have to do the corner algorithm twice. So just hold it any way you like. X', R2 D2 R U R' D2 R U' R B, and now we see two same stickers here. Put them on the right. X', R2 D2 R U R' D2 R U' R B. So now I see that all these are finished. We have a corner cycle. We put the solved edge on the back. This is a clockwise cycle because this edge needs to come here, this here, and this here. So this is a clockwise cycle. Do the algorithm F2 U L R' F2 L' R U F2, and the cube is solved.
