Mind Gaming
Learn Samay Raina’s favourite techniques to solve the Rubik’s Cube
The comedian and popular streamer explains four methods distinct methods to solve the Rubik’s Cube which are easy enough for anyone to learn.
In the last few months, stand-up comic Samay Raina has been making an effort to make chess more popular.
His efforts have been through live streams that have featured famous Indian personalities like comics Tanmay Bhat, Biswa Kalyan Rath and Abish Mathew, cricketer Yuzvendra Chahal, and chess athletes like Viswanathan Anand and Tania Sachdev.
Now the 23-year-old is hoping to popularize the Rubik’s Cube in India.
“People who have no knowledge of it think it is boring,” says Samay. “But like chess, it is just the fear of the unknown. Once you expose yourself to it, it is an endless spiral into addiction!”
1 min
How to solve a Rubik's Cube: Introduction
Ever wanted to be able to solve a Rubik's Cube, but were afraid to ask?
Samay got hooked onto the cube when he was in the seventh standard, mainly because he “didn’t have enough attention.” He solved it often while riding the school bus and got a few of his peers interested in it.
Till date, the fastest he has ever solved the Rubik’s Cube is 36 seconds. “That was when I was in eighth and ninth (standard),” he explains. “Now I take about a minute and five or seven seconds.”
There are many different methods to solving the cube and perfecting these methods can help you register the best possible time. We asked Samay to list out some of his favourite techniques that you could try if you want to learn speed cubing.
Layer-by-layer
There are six faces to a standard 3x3 Rubik’s Cube. These faces are front (facing you), left, right, back, up and down. The colour of the faces will depend on how you maintain the orientation of the cube. Keep the faces constant even when you are moving the layers around.
As the name suggests, the layer-by-layer method helps you solve the cube one layer at a time. It is one of the most basic techniques to learn.
Samay says he solves the white ‘face’ first with the orientation as up. For this, the white ‘centre’ piece is the starting point. Using this as a reference, move the white edge pieces around it to form a ‘cross’ and then the corners. According to how your cube is scrambled, there will be a lot of algorithms coming into play to solve it.
Fridrich method
It is also known as the CFOP method and is one of the most commonly used techniques for speed cubing. It is broken down into four steps: Cross, First two layers, Orientation of the last layer, and Permutation of the last layer.
As the name of the second step suggests, you solve the first two layers simultaneously in this method, which can help you solve twice as fast as the traditional layer-by-layer method.
Czech speedcuber Jessica Fridrich, after whom the technique is named, wrote the OLL and PLL algorithms (third and fourth steps of the method) that helped any last layer position to be solved with two algorithms.
This method is considered to be the most structured cube solving technique since it relies on following algorithms rather than intuition.
ZZ method
Proposed by Zbigniew Zborowski in 2006, it is a new method of speed cubing.
The most important characteristic of this method is the EOline – edge orientation (all the edge pieces on the cube) – and solving two opposite first layer edges. This is the starting point of the ZZ method rather than the traditional cross.
The ZZ method is a mix between the layer-by-layer method and block building. It is best known for move count and move ergonomics, which means it gives you a better turn-per-second rate than traditional methods.
Roux method
Invented by French speed cuber Gilles Roux, it is considered one of the most efficient methods to speed solve.
Unlike the earlier techniques, this one starts with making a 3x2x1 block, usually on the left face. Then, without disturbing this block, make a similar 3x2x1 block on the opposite face. The third step is to solve all corners of the last layer and the last step involves solving the last six edges.
This method relies more on inspecting and thinking rather than a set of algorithms. It is also usually slower than the Fridrich or ZZ methods, especially when starting out, because the middle slice needs to be moved frequently.
3 min
Rubik's Cube mosaic by Giovanni Contardi
This mosaic created with 6,111 Rubik’s Cubes will put you in a spin.