Printable Rubik's Cube Guides (PDFs for 2x2x2 - 5x5x5)

[Escher]

oh and by the way: it happens to me by the 4x4x4 that i cant´t do normal F2L after pairing the edges. the colours are switched so that they don´t fit in their slots... Any ideas for that?

Are your centers in the right places?

yes...and all edges are paired...

fail, your centres are wrong. get a 3x3 and compare them.

 

[byu]

No, the point is, are they in the correct orientation? If you have the american scheme, you need to have Red-White-Blue centers going clockwise.

 

[Edam]

I noticed that under the square 1 tutorial you wrote:
" None of the pictures on this guide are my own and thus I still need to obtain permission to publish it. Unfortunately, I can't find the website that I took these pictures from…"

i'm not sure if you were just talking about the square 1 tutorial or not, but it looks to me like the sq1 images came from
http://www.geocities.com/abcmcfarren/math/sq1/sq1xf.htm

 

[AndyK]

From the screen shots it looks like you put a whole lot of time and effort into making them.
Sticky maybe?

Hey SoccerKing, I must admit I spent a hell of a lot of time on these and it would be soo awesome if they were stickied in this forum. That would be the ultimate endorsement and I hope the end result of such a thing would be that it helps a lot of people learn to speedcube.

Hey, Andy, great to see that you've posted these guides. =D

Thanks man, I hope the Motor City Open goes well, unfortunately I don't think school will let me get away that weekend

The main parity one is correct. The thing is, his lines are parallel for the two opposite edge switcher. It doesn't really matter, but it's actually swapping them diagonally.

I'm glad everyone pointed the parity diagram problem out to me, I figured they shouldn't be parallel but knew that either way it wouldn't affect the actual solve. I fixed the figure and please let me know if you find anything else that needs improvement. The OLL section in the full Fridrich guide is the one that I have revised the least and thus possibly needs the most improvement.

i'm not sure if you were just talking about the square 1 tutorial or not, but it looks to me like the sq1 images came from
http://www.geocities.com/abcmcfarren/math/sq1/sq1xf.htm

Sweet! I made my guide for the Square-1 about 2 years ago and when I went to release them all I couldn't find that site again so I could contact them. I will email them and hopefully have it posted in about a week (it still needs some tweaking and I'm thinking I will add in some stuff from Lars's site).

 

[Neroflux]

third awkward shape: alg should be inverse.

first p shape: rotate diagram 180 degrees.

second w shape: switch B and B'

suggestion: put notation page somewhere near the top.

i dont want thanks, i dont want kudos, i want cookies.

 

[AndyK]

third awkward shape: alg should be inverse.

first p shape: rotate diagram 180 degrees.

second w shape: switch B and B'

suggestion: put notation page somewhere near the top.

i dont want thanks, i dont want kudos, i want cookies.

First P Shape - fixed
Second W Shape - fixed

Third awkward shape - the alg as it is written works for me, I don't understand why the inverse would be better
F U (R U' R') F' (R' U2) (R U R' U R)

Having the notation page near front would make sense since that is the first thing people need, but I put it near the back because it is the easiest to learn and thus once people learned is out of the way on the last page.

Dude, I will do one better, here is a recipe for the best cookies there are AND a picture of a girl eating a cookie. Well actually, I couldn't find a suitable picture... do good looking girls not eat cookies?

 

[byu]

I must say that you've done an INCREDIBLE job writing these tutorials, I know how hard and how time consuming it is to write or videotape tutorials (see my YouTube channel for a whole assortment of blindfolded tutorials). Great job Andy. I have the following questions for you:

1. How fast are you?
2. How long have you been cubing?
3. Did you REALLY name your dog Rubik? If so, what kind of dog?

And this will be my response if I see another "How do you solve a 5x5?" thread.

 

[Neroflux]

Third awkward shape - the alg as it is written works for me, I don't understand why the inverse would be better
F U (R U' R') F' (R' U2) (R U R' U R)

facepalm***
hey sorry that's true, nothing's wrong with it.

Dude, I will do one better, here is a recipe for the best cookies there are AND a picture of a girl eating a cookie. Well actually, I couldn't find a suitable picture... do good looking girls not eat cookies?

 

[AndyK]

I must say that you've done an INCREDIBLE job writing these tutorials, I know how hard and how time consuming it is to write or videotape tutorials (see my YouTube channel for a whole assortment of blindfolded tutorials). Great job Andy. I have the following questions for you:

1. How fast are you?
2. How long have you been cubing?
3. Did you REALLY name your dog Rubik? If so, what kind of dog?

And this will be my response if I see another "How do you solve a 5x5?" thread.

Hey byu, thank you so much for the kind words. I've actually read both your 3x3x3 and 2x2x2 blindfolded methods and watched many of your videos and really liked them/learned a lot from them. Excellent work! I wish I would have started cubing at your age, but I started the same year as Erik (according to his website). The only difference between him and I is that his fastest time is 21 seconds faster than mine But that is only three seconds slower than my age (if you convert years to seconds) and I've shaved 30 seconds off of my time during the cubing renaissance that I've experienced in the last 4 months (before that I wasn't very serious about it and was on about a 2.5 year hiatus). Excuses, excuses, I know. I really hope that a best time like that doesn't undermine my guides. I don't think it should either because my guides do not present a new method that would teach someone how to cube like me, instead they compile the methods of the pros into single page printable guides.

I am very happy that you would recommend my guide to a new 5x5x5er. Word of mouth is definitely the best way for them to reach more people!

Oh, and my dog is definitely named Rubik. When one of my friends heard that I got a dog she was like, "are you gonna name it Rubik?" and it just stuck after that. Es ist ein Schnauzer (that may be really bad German).

Third awkward shape - the alg as it is written works for me, I don't understand why the inverse would be better
F U (R U' R') F' (R' U2) (R U R' U R)

facepalm***
hey sorry that's true, nothing's wrong with it.

Hey Neroflux, I didn't mean to be snarky in my comment there. I think I actually like the inverse better now because it is more similar to the 4th awkward shape alg

 

[Neroflux]

Hey Neroflux, I didn't mean to be snarky in my comment there. I think I actually like the inverse better now because it is more similar to the 4th awkward shape alg

er no im really wrong about the alg, i thought you were using R U R' U R U2 R' F R U R' U' F'. my fault, i didnt check properly.

 

[AndyK]

Yeah, woops, I just realized that too

 

[rahulkadukar]

Nice guide

 

[ConnorCuber]

oh and by the way: it happens to me by the 4x4x4 that i cant´t do normal F2L after pairing the edges. the colours are switched so that they don´t fit in their slots... Any ideas for that?

Are your centers in the right places?

yes...and all edges are paired...

No they aren't, do Rr2 B2 F2 Rr2. That will correct these.

 

[Kidstardust]

so it is not my fault. that "parity can happen" or did i a mistake?

 

[byu]

You made a mistake with color scheme.

 

[not_kevin]

oh and by the way: it happens to me by the 4x4x4 that i cant´t do normal F2L after pairing the edges. the colours are switched so that they don´t fit in their slots... Any ideas for that?

Are your centers in the right places?

yes...and all edges are paired...

No they aren't, do Rr2 B2 F2 Rr2. That will correct these.

Personally I prefer Rr2 U2 D2 Rr2 for fingertricks (same alg, really).

 

[JustinJ]

oh and by the way: it happens to me by the 4x4x4 that i cant´t do normal F2L after pairing the edges. the colours are switched so that they don´t fit in their slots... Any ideas for that?

Are your centers in the right places?

yes...and all edges are paired...

No they aren't, do Rr2 B2 F2 Rr2. That will correct these.

Personally I prefer Rr2 U2 D2 Rr2 for fingertricks (same alg, really).

I like Uu2 M2 Uu2 for the same reason. I didn't realize so many people did that differently!

Great job on these guides, I've already handed out a copy of the 3x3 one to someone who wanted to learn at school.

 

[bakalnapaa]

this is very helpful bro.. thanks a lot! i appreciate all the effort you put in doing this.

 

[iSpinz]

You should make one for petrus

 

[AndyK]

Thanks for the feedback everybody!

I'm actually crafting a variant of my single page CFOP guide that I think will be much improved and will focus on faster algorithms.

In doing so I:

• Completely reorganized the F2L section to group by alg similarity instead of location of cubies
• Am adding an OLL page that will may have all the OLLs organized alg similarity (depending on your feedback)
• Got rid of that stupid edge control section that I added on the day I released the guides before realizing it was pointless

Before finishing I would like some specific feedback on two issues:

• Do you guys prefer algorithms to be displayed with parenthesis or without parenthesis? It seems that everybody always posts algs without parenthesis, but I don't like that as much. Obviously, the downside of me posting algorithms with parenthesis is that it makes may limit one's creativity in coming up with their own fingertricks for the alg.
• Do you like how I grouped the OLLs by shape, but then color coded the algorithms to note their similarities? Camps seem to be divided on how OLLs should be grouped. Which way would you like to have them grouped in my guides (by alg similarity or by shape)?

You should make one for petrus

I'd be up for making one for Petrus. Which algs do you like the best for Petrus?