Speedcubing ~ Jessica Fridich

Rubik’s Cube has been frustrating millions of people who bought or attempted to solve it since 1974, invented by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Erno Rubik. I’m one of those frustrated people since a few years back until yesterday when the puzzle was solved.

Jessica Fridrich was the inventor of speedcubing, layer-by-layer methods which can be divided to the methods of F2L Alternatives, ZB method, ZZ method and VH method.

The method I used was for beginner only. It’s hard for me to explain it without a diagram and I’m unable to find all, so I’ll just simply write out the method and the algorithms that used to solve this puzzle:

• F – Front
• R – Right
• L – Left
• U – Up
• D – Down
• i – anti-clockwise turning

The method consists of 4 steps:

The Cross, First Two Layers, Orientation of Last Layer and Permutation of Last Layer.

The algorithms used were:

1. The Cross

Fi U Li Ui (for edge pieces, unsolved edge is F)

Solved Cross and Edges

2. First Two Layers

Ri Di R D for the 1st layer (for unsolved corners at the bottom right)
Ui Li U L U F Ui Fi (turn upside down, unsolved edges at top to left side)
U R Ui Ri Ui Fi U F (turn upside down, unsolved edges at top to right side)

3. Orientation of Last Layer (turn the cube with the unsolved face upward)

F R U Ri Ui Fi (Get a reversed L-shaped at the top and make it to a horizontal line and then a cross)
R U Ri U R U U Ri (Top edge aligned to middle is F, to get all edges in place)

4. Permutation of Last Layer

U R Ui Li U Ri Ui L (Corner in place at top right, objective is to get all corners in place)
Ri Di R D (when one corner solved, turn Ui and repeat until all corners aligned)

I know that it’s hard to understand the explanations above. To make it easy, go to YouTube and search for “Rubik Cube”, it comes with 2 parts of videos. Enjoy and good luck in solving the riddles.

*Notes: I've edited the post. Thanks for Zaid in pointing out my mistakes.