Orientation

Orient means to flip/rotate a piece. On the 3x3x3 Rubik's cube, corners and edges each have their own orientation; corners can be flipped 3 ways, and edges can be flipped in 2 ways. If the cube has a picture on it, the centres can also be oriented (resulting in extra work to solve), but this is not the case on standard cubes. Because of how the cube behaves, only pairs of like pieces can be oriented; it is impossible to orient just one piece. If you rotate one corner clockwise, another one must be rotated counterclockwise.

See also

• Permute
• Orientation
• Permutation