Introduction

Principles

This document describes the Jessica Fridrich's method to solve the 3x3 Rubik's cube efficiently. This method is targeted for people already knowing how to solve the cube in 3 or 4 minutes, wanting to go below the minute.

The Fridrich method involves 4 steps:

• create a white cross: 4 algorithms to use out of 17

• complete 2 first layers: 4 algorithms to use out of 41

• orient the last layer: 1 algorithm to use out of 57

• permute the last layer: 1 algorithm to use out of 21

The method is also called CFOP for Cross/First/Orient/Permute.

The method requires to memorize a set of dozen of algorithms for each step. This document describes a possible implementation based on 119 algorithms from the Ruwix web site (see reference below), but the algorithm themselves do not really belong to the method, since every paper referring to the Fridrich method offers different algorithms. I also added 17 algorithms for the white cross, just for the sake of completeness because this step can be done intuitively.

Only 6 algorithms need to be used to solve the 3 last steps.

Illustration

All the algorithms are illustrated with a 3 dimensional exploded cube, that let the 6 faces to be displayed on each view. And also because the resulting images are cool!

Views are normalized, so every algorithm is described with the white face down, the blue face front and the red face right. Since the cube is seen in perspective, the most visible faces are the blue, red and yellow ones.

Besides, depending on the steps, some irrelevant cubes may be just represented as mesh.

References

• The initial method described by Jessica Fridrich herself

• Resources including multiple algorithms per case

• Resources for numerous types of methods

• The Ruwix site where most of this paper's algorithms come from

• A alternate PDF version of these pages: