Meet the cube

A Rubik’s cube has six faces with nine stickers each. Solving the cube means bringing every face to a single colour. In this lesson you meet the cube’s pieces and the rules that never change.

Centres: The piece in the middle of each face is its centre. Centres never move relative to each other, so a face’s centre decides its colour. The face with the yellow centre is all yellow when the cube is solved.

Edges and corners: The cube has 12 edge pieces (2 colours each) and 8 corner pieces (3 colours each). An edge always stays in an edge place and a corner in a corner place. Use the buttons below to see each kind of piece on the cube.

Opposite colours: White is opposite yellow, green opposite blue, and red opposite orange. This holds for every cube with the standard colour scheme.

We solve pieces, not faces: Bringing one face to one colour is not enough; every piece has to reach its own place, with its colours matching the centres around it. This method puts the pieces in place one layer at a time.

How to hold the cube: From now on, always hold the cube with the yellow centre on top and the white centre at the bottom. Every picture and move in the lessons assumes this hold.