If you want to learn square-1 without guides, it can be done; it just requires patience.
Here's what I did:
1. Play with it a while just learning how to get it to square. That's a challenge in and of itself. When I figured it out myself, I did already know that one of the keys was that you had to get it to square first, and then figure out ways to solve it from there. It's really worth it once you get it to square to scramble it up and try again and again. Watch what happens as you scramble it, so you can learn from it. After a while, you'll figure out ways to get some of the more common cases solved, and you can eventually get it to where you can always get it square. There are only 90 different cases of shapes, so it can never be all that bad to get it to square - you'll eventually luck into it.
2. Once you get it square, start trying to do simple repetitive things that never go more than a move or two from square, and figure out where the pieces go as a result. Eventually you'll find a few algorithms that move just a few pieces at a time and leave the rest alone. You'll use them to solve it.
3. Eventually you'll probably solve it because you got lucky and didn't get parity. When you get there, congratulations! You're halfway there!
4. If you're crazy like me and want to be able to say you came up with a complete method on your own, now you need to look for a parity algorithm. You can do what I did - just do a bunch of crazy moves, keeping track of what you did, to get fairly far away from square, and then do something different to get back to square. If you're lucky, it will change parity, and then you can solve it again, this time knowing you won't get parity. Then I figure you legitimately have a complete solving method.
Have fun! I'm really glad I figured it out on my own. It took me about 3 weeks.
