RUBIK'S CUBE STRATEGY
In a standard cube the six colors are red, blue, yellow, green, white and orange. The colors opposite of each other are fixed, like red and orange, and cannot be interchanged. This is the basic trick to understand the cube better. There is a particular way of holding the cube so as to make it easy for the player to move in precise steps. Keeping a fixed side facing you for reference, the other sides can be marked as the the opposite color of that facing side, the upper side, the side to the left, and the fixed color on the right side.
Although there are a significant number of possible permutations for the Rubik's Cube, there have been a number of solutions developed which allow for the cube to be solved in well under 100 moves.
Many general solutions for the Rubik's Cube have been discovered independently. The most popular method was developed by David Singmaster. This solution involves solving the Cube layer by layer, in which one layer (designated the top) is solved first, followed by the middle layer, and then the final and bottom layer. After practice, solving the Cube layer by layer can be done in under one minute. Other general solutions include "corners first" methods or combinations of several other methods.
A solution commonly used by speed cubers was developed by Jessica Friedrich. It is similar to the layer-by-layer method but employs the use of a large number of algorithms, especially for orienting and permuting the last layer. The cross is done first followed by first-layer corners and second layer edges simultaneously, with each corner paired up with a second-layer edge piece. This is then followed by orienting the last layer then permuting the last layer (OLL and PLL respectively). It requires learning roughly 120 algorithms but allows the Cube to be solved in only 55 moves on average.
A now well-known method was developed by Lars Petrus. In this method, a 2×2×2 section is solved first, followed by a 2×2×3, and then the incorrect edges are solved using a three-move algorithm, which eliminates the need for a possible 32-move algorithm later. The principle behind this is that in layer by layer you must constantly break and fix the first layer; the 2×2×2 and 2×2×3 sections allow three or two layers to be turned without ruining progress. One of the advantages of this method is that it tends to give solutions in fewer moves.
