hi everyone welcome back to my channel today we're doing something really fun i'm going to be showing you how to solve a rubik's cube up until last week i had never even touched a rubik's cube and now i can solve one and i did that by watching a bunch of youtube videos and some of them i feel like glazed over some absolute beginner necessities when solving a cube for the very first time so my hope with this video is to kind of combine a bunch of things that i learned from different videos into one so you can just watch this one and hopefully solve your first cube i will leave a list in the description box of all the steps and their time stamps so if you need to go back to something or skip ahead to something you can just click on the time stamp and it'll take you right to that point in the video so i want to start off with some absolute cube basics so if you already know all this you can go ahead and skip ahead but i wanted to start off with the cube solved so that i can show you the pieces of the cube since it is essentially a puzzle i want to show you all the pieces and components that make up the cube so to start off we have the center pieces and the center pieces are always going to stay the same no matter how scrambled you make the cube no matter if you rotate around you're just going to be rotating around the center pieces they're not going to be moving so you can use those as your anchor pieces essentially to know where each colored face is going to end up since those center pieces are never going to move you'll always know that the blue center is going to create the blue face yellow center will create the yellow face and so on and so forth so those pieces are really going to be your home base pieces the next pieces are the corner pieces and the corner pieces have three colors on them and then the third type of piece are these center or middle pieces and they just have two colors on them so now that you understand the anatomy of the cube if you will i am going to show you one of the most important algorithms for solving this cube that we'll be using a majority of the time the best way to hold the cube is to hold your non-dominant hand with your thumb on this bottom left quadrant right here to stabilize the cube while you turn the pieces i would recommend putting two of your fingers on the top here and then your thumb on the bottom to turn so that you leave your forefinger free to push the other sides so now let's go over the very first algorithm and it goes like this it's right face up you're gonna push with your forefinger push the top clockwise down counterclockwise so just practice that because that's going to help you solve a majority of the cube and the left is similar you're going to go left face up but this time you're going to push with your left finger counterclockwise left down clockwise and now we're ready to scramble the cube and start solving okay if you're just starting out i would recommend starting with building a daisy and the daisy is a yellow center with four white squares surrounding it so that it looks like a little flower and so what you're going to want to do is just search for the yellow center and then start adjusting the cube to get the white surrounding it so you're going to be looking for white pieces that just have two colors on it like this one right here this one's pretty easy we can just twist it up and there is no algorithm for this it's just kind of searching the cube to find those so here's one right here this one is another one that's relatively easy because if we just turn it like this and it is in place so let's look for another one there's one right here so let's try that same method by just turning it and it would be solved if the white and green were switched so here's an easy way around that if you rotate this piece once this way now it's here just twist it up and now it's around we just have one more left which is over here so we're going to want to rotate it and it's the same issue so these are swapped so what you can do is turn it once this way but since this square is already solved what you're going to want to do is rotate the top layer once this way to free up a square and then go like that and your daisy is solved now once your daisy is solved you're going to have to match up the petals with their corresponding home base colors so for example this one's orange so we're going to twist it over to orange and once it is in its home we can flip this side all the way down so that white is with white and orange is with orange and then just do that with each corresponding petal so we'll do red with red turn that upside down green with green turn that upside down and blue with blue turn that upside down and then once you flip over the cube you'll have a white cross and before you move on to the next step you want to make sure if you build your white cross that the points of the cross are all in their corresponding homes and all of these are the next step is to solve for the corners surrounding the white cross so the way to do that is to make sure that the cross is face down and we're going to solve it that way so the easiest thing to do is to start by looking for pieces on the top row that have white on them so this is a good example of that this is white red and blue so what we're going to want to do is move it between white red and blue so now we know that this piece is going to feel at home right here between those three colors so now that it's in the right place we can just start with that right algorithm that we learned earlier it's once twice three times and now that piece is at home in all of its respective colored locations then we'll just do that again with any other piece that's on top so for example this one is now white blue and orange so we'll just move that to between white blue and orange and now we just do the right algorithm again and there's no telling exactly how many times you'll have to do this until that piece is solved so you'll just have to keep an eye on it until it is solved so now it's solved white with white orange with orange blue with blue so here is another one up here red white and green so let's move it between white red and green and then we can solve all right so now there's just one more corner left and as you can see this piece is actually already in the correct location between white green and orange it's just oriented the wrong way so all we have to do is just do our right algorithm again and now it's all solved and if you solved the white face correctly your bottom row should also be solved and all the colors should be with their corresponding home base colors the next step is to solve the rest of the middle row so we're going to be solving for these four pieces right here and the way you do that is by looking for pieces on the top row this one right here that don't have yellow on them and remember we're only looking for these middle pieces right now we're not doing corners so you're going to look for pieces with two colors that aren't yellow since yellow is on the top we kind of want to just ignore that for now so this piece is a good example it has red and green so we want to solve this piece but first we need to take green to its home so we take it to the green center and now we can solve for this piece and the way we do that is by deciding where it needs to go and just by looking at the cube we can see it needs to go right here between green and red so how do we get this piece here the first thing you're going to want to do is determine if the piece that you're looking for needs to go to the left or the right of the center piece and in our case it needs to go to the left so the first thing you're going to do is push it away from where it needs to go so now it's over here and then do the algorithm depending on which side it needs to go to so since we need it to go to the left we're going to do the left algorithm just once and if you did it correctly you'll have a white piece in the upper left hand corner then what you're going to want to do is turn the cube just once 90 degrees the whole cube until that white piece is in your right hand and now you're going to do a right algorithm so now we put that white piece back at home and we have that original piece that we were trying to solve for exactly where we wanted it to go so then we'll just do that again with any of the other colors and now you might run into this situation where this piece is in the correct spot but oriented the wrong way so here's how to solve for that we're going to pretend like we need to take this piece and put it here so how do we do that we do it the same way we've been doing it by pushing it away but this time since we want it to go to the right we're going to use our right algorithm the white square will be in the upper right hand corner so we're going to turn the cube the other way to the left do one left algorithm and now that piece is free for us to solve for so first thing we need to do is put green back to its home and now we can solve for this piece just like we've been doing by first pushing it away doing a right algorithm since it needs to go to the right rotating the cube doing one left algorithm [Music] and now that piece is solved the next step is creating a yellow cross on the top just like we did with the white cross earlier and there are a couple scenarios you might run into with this one one of them being you have a yellow center with no yellow pieces surrounding it in that case you can do this algorithm from anywhere you might have a yellow horizontal line or in my case we have this l shape right here if you have the l shape you're going to want to orient your cube so that the l shape is in the back left quadrant and now you can start the algorithm and it goes like this you're going to turn the front face once so that you have this white line over here then you're gonna do one right algorithm and then put that face back and now as you can see we have a yellow horizontal line if you have a yellow horizontal line you want to keep it this way you don't want the cube vertical you want it horizontal and then you're going to do this one more time and now we have a yellow cross the next step is to get the pieces of the yellow cross oriented with their proper homes so when you reach this stage you'll either have two faces in their correct spot or four so since i only have one that means i need to try rotating it again to see here we go so now we have two if you have two that are right next to each other you're going to want to hold the cube with those two faces in the back right if they're across from each other you can do this from anywhere but if you have the two that are next to each other do this from here and if you have all four already solved that's great you'll just skip this step so this is a new algorithm as well so for this one what you're going to want to do is turn the right side up and you'll notice these two pieces right here you want to keep an eye on these because these are going to be traveling together around the cube so now that they're on top we're gonna push them over once and then put the right face back down now we're gonna push them over again until they're in the back left corner opposite from where they started and then we're going to turn the right face back up again until we have two white dots and then we're going to bring this all the way back until the white line matches up and then we're going to bring this down and now all of your sides should match and now we can try to get the corner pieces in their correct spots before moving on to the next step so we're going to want to look around to see if any of these corner pieces might be in the correct location just oriented the wrong way and it looks like we don't have any so in this step you'll either have zero one or four corners all in the correct spot i obviously have zero so i'm gonna do this algorithm from anywhere if you have one then you're gonna make sure that you do this algorithm with that one piece that's solved in the front right corner and if you have four you can just move on to the next step so this algorithm is different it is clockwise up counterclockwise up clockwise down counterclockwise down and let's see are any of them in the right spot now yes we have one now so we have yellow red and blue so now we're going to do that again but we're going to hold this one in the front right and now they're all in the right corners so now we can move on to the next step which is flipping the cube upside down and solving for the yellow face which is of course solving the cube so what you're going to want to do when you reach this stage is remember which face you're starting with i'll just start with the orange face since this one is already solved we can just leave that i'm going to start with the orange face and this piece just needs to be reoriented until the yellow piece is right here once you get to this step a solved piece will be when the yellow is on the yellow face you're going to disregard what this looks like for now since the cube is going to look very scrambled it might be confusing so just know that your piece is solved when yellow is in its home okay so yellow is in its home and now what you're going to want to do is keep the cube oriented this way and just turn the bottom row once and then you're going to solve for this piece and again it's solved once we have yellow here so now it's solved even though as you can see these are not doesn't matter now we're going to rotate it once more and solve for that yellow corner and our cube is now solved that's it for today i really really hope you enjoyed this video and were able to solve your first cube if you did let me know in the comments so we can celebrate and if you have any friends who you know are trying to solve cube send them this video and if you liked it please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel i really appreciate the support and i hope to see you in my next video bye [Music]