Rubik's Cube One Handed : Tutorial

So I've been solving one-handed for a few months now, and with almost no real practice, I average somewhere in the 35 or 40-second range. Now that's not really that great, so I'm not really an expert, but I think I'll still be able to give you some pointers on how to get started with solving the Rubik's Cube just using one hand. Okay, so first of all, you want to choose which hand you're going to use. The choice is rather arbitrary, and there are many people who use the left hand and almost just as many that use the right hand. And I don't think that there's a big correlation between whether or not you're left-handed or right-handed. For example, I chose left-hand because the— I'm right-handed— I chose left-hand because the cube felt a little more stable in my left hand. That, and I also wanted to be able to eat with my right hand while I solve with my left. One other advantage is that most of the algorithms you already know are probably very R and U heavy, and it is just quite awkward in my opinion to do the R moves with the right hand. So I suggest you probably try to use left first and just switch if it feels wrong, but it's mostly a personal preference. Okay, I'll be explaining everything from the perspective of someone who solves with their left hand because I solve with my left hand, so I hope that makes sense. So basic moves: U is done like this, that's pretty self-explanatory. U', I do like that, and I don't think that there is a better way to do it. For Rs, I use my pinky like this. I know that some people use their ring finger to do it. For R', I use my index finger like this, and I know that that's not the best way, and I've been recently trying to switch to using pinky like this in some cases. And I know that some people actually use ring finger to do those moves, and that's just ridiculous. Those people are clearly an abomination because I just don't see how you do that. And you want to practice a lot of combinations, so R and U, U and R, and all those combo moves of U and R, because everything, your entire one-handed solve is going to compose of these two moves and cube rotations, of course. So you want them to be really quick. Okay, so now the actual solve. So cross natural, you'll probably do the same way as you do two-handed. You will most likely find F2L to be easy because you will have plenty of time to look ahead, unlike in a two-handed solve. Now where it gets really interesting though is the OLL step, and you have a couple of options based on how lazy or not lazy you are. Obviously, if you are really serious about one-handed cubing, you will learn all of the one-handed OLLs, and I'll give you links to all of those. If you are less serious, you will attempt to use the same OLLs you probably use for the two-handed solves. Now, that's what I do. But you will most likely find it very difficult to execute these algorithms with just one hand. Now, I know it was very difficult for me, and I had to relearn most of these OLLs for one hand simply by doing them with both hands and then trying to see what the hell I was doing. It's just not as easy as it sounds. Now, if you are even less serious, you will probably use the Tuluk OLL, which is how I started, where you only need to relearn a couple of algorithms, the 7 algorithms where all the edges are oriented correctly. Now still for the OLL you have more options. Another thing that you can learn is the ZB F2L, which are basically algorithms for inserting the last F2L pair in such a way that when you're done inserting it, all the edges are oriented. So for example, for this case where the two edges here are correctly oriented, there's only like 8 cases I think. For this case in particular, you don't insert it like normally you would, but instead you use the R' F R F' insertion. and that guarantees that your cross will be solved when you insert it. So there's 8 of those, and so you could try that as well. The last approach that you can use is to do the Petrus method approach to solving the F2L, because Petrus method approach guarantees that once you finish F2L, you will come out with all the edges oriented on the top. So again, you only have to relearn those 7 OLL cases for one hand. Now, in Petrus' method, you don't do the cross or anything like that, but you build this 2x2x3 block like this. Then you hold the cube just like that, and you do some more— you do some magic here, which I'm not going to explain, but basically you orient all the edges in this step. So there was magic there. You can check the links for how to do this in detail. And now basically you only solve F2L using R and U moves after this. And that will guarantee that once you finish F2L, you are guaranteed to run into a case where all the, all the edges are oriented correctly, so you can solve the OLL easily. So for the PLL, you don't have that many options. You can basically use the 2-look PLL, or you can relearn the 2-handed PLLs for one hand, which is what I did, or you can look up special one-handed PLLs, and I'll give you links to those. And it just so happens that all those links actually are from people that use the left hand as well, so you want to use the left hand if you want to learn from those algorithms. So just because I'm lazy, I'm executing this awkward PLL for this case that was meant for two hands. So again, you wanna find something better if you're serious at all. Okay, and lastly, I want to stress that learning to solve one-handed just takes practice more than anything. For example, I have all this awesome theoretical knowledge, and yet the cube does not feel stable in my right hand, and I probably average a minute or two with it. There's just nothing I can do about it. It's very much of a practice thing. So just make sure you do a lot of that, and you'll be cubing one-handed in no time. And that's it for now. Bye-bye! Okay, so I know that you guys really like the bloopers and stuff, but nothing really funny happened during making of this video. But I'll share with you a trick instead. So it's really hard to do one-handed moves with your right hand, for me, with the other hand, but it's surprisingly easy to mirror moves across the cubes. I'm not sure why, it's got something to do with how screwed up we are in the head and how the brain actually works. But anyway, it's surprisingly easy to do with just a little bit of practice and if you have a good cube, unlike this cube here. And then actually you can look like you're solving two hands, uh, two cubes at the same time, but actually you're just mirroring all the moves across. And it's surprisingly easy and kind of fun, so try it.