Read a cube formula, one turn at a time.

Six letters, six fixed faces

A formula names a face, not the direction your camera is currently looking. U is the original upper face, D the lower face, F the front, B the back, R the right and L the left. Our coach keeps these labels on the centers, even while you drag the cube around.

Before following a lesson with a physical cube, match its front and top centers to the on-screen orientation. A different color scheme is fine: the centers you enter define the faces. The standard-center shortcut uses white down, yellow up and green in front.

A letter, a prime, or a 2

• R means turn the right layer clockwise by 90 degrees, looking directly at the right face.
• R' means turn the same layer counterclockwise by 90 degrees. The apostrophe is called a prime.
• R2 means turn that layer by 180 degrees. Either turning direction reaches the same state.

The same rules apply to all six face letters. Looking at the front of the cube while judging a back-face turn is a common source of mistakes. Use the face-view buttons to inspect the named face, then return to Teaching view.

Read an algorithm from left to right

For R U R' U', first turn the right layer clockwise, then the top layer clockwise, then undo the right-layer turn, then turn the top layer counterclockwise. It is a sequence of four distinct actions, not a simultaneous motion.

Our player highlights the active letter. Next applies exactly one turn. Back applies its inverse and restores the previous state. Replay last turn begins from the previous snapshot and repeats the animation without adding another turn to your cube.

A formula has a job and a starting position

The same formula does not solve every scrambled position. A lesson has to choose a suitable setup, show the target and check the result. The cross stage uses a path specific to your four bottom edges. Later stages use insertion and permutation groups that preserve the parts already completed at the group boundary.

For example, the coach uses F R U R' U' F' as one of its top-edge orientation tools. It may need setup turns or more than one application. Do not apply a memorised sequence blindly to an unrelated cube state.

Check the whole group, not only a halfway frame

A partly completed layer may look disturbed in the middle of a formula. What matters is whether the invariant is restored when the group finishes. The coach separately verifies each group boundary and each completed stage before displaying a lesson.

Compact playback combines adjacent turns on the same face. It is not an optimal-move solver, and its merged moves are not relabelled as if they were a beginner method.

Try it with a real position

Open the cube coach, set the six centers, and paint the stickers from your physical cube. Use the six-face editor for hard-to-see faces. Dotted white stickers are still empty; explicitly paint real white stickers white.

If your physical cube no longer matches the screen, use My cube is different, correct the current colors and start a fresh lesson. There is no need to return to the original scramble.

For another explanation of notation and beginner steps, see the Rubik’s official quick reference.