The 5×5 is your 4×4 toolkit with one gift attached: an odd layer count. Odd cubes have a true middle layer everywhere, so every face carries a fixed center sticker again — just like the 3×3. Same plan as the 4×4: build centers, pair edges, solve as a 3×3. Only the sizes changed.
One notation addition: a number in front of a wide move widens the grab.
Rw still turns two layers; 3Rw turns three.
Centers: three bars each
A 5×5 center is a 3×3 block of nine stickers — one fixed, eight to place. Don’t place them one by one; build bars:
- Middle bar — a line of three through the fixed center.
- Side bars — build a line of three on a free face, attach it beside the middle bar. Repeat on the other side.
Order: white → yellow → the ring. Solve white, then yellow directly opposite. Then hold white and yellow on left and right — the four remaining faces form a ring around the cube, and every move you make stays on unsolved faces. Finish the ring one center at a time; the last two complete together.
The insert: taking a piece away and putting it back
Sooner or later a centre piece you need is on a face you have already finished, and you cannot just turn that face to fetch it. The move is always the same shape: take a column away, do the one turn you actually wanted, put the column back.
Why it is safe: Rw carries a whole column away, U only touches the top
layer, Rw' carries the column back. Every piece the grab moved that the
middle turn did not touch returns to the exact slot it left — measured, the
R, L, B and D centres come back untouched. The only pieces that end up
somewhere new are the one you wanted to move and the one you displaced to
make room.
Those three beats are the whole tool, and the only thing you choose is the
grab: Rw, 2R, M and Lw' all give the same shape, and which one you
reach for is decided by the column your piece has to land in. That is
searched rather than claimed — on a 5×5, nothing shorter than three moves
moves a piece between two centres while leaving the other four whole.
The last bar: grab twice
One grab always throws something out. Usually you do not care, because the target face is still half-built and the piece it displaced was going to move anyway. On the last bar you do care: the only thing left to displace is part of the bar you just finished.
The answer is the same insert twice, in two different layers — and this is the pattern J Perm walks through move by move rather than naming, because there is no single string to name:
- Line the piece up on top, over the column it has to land in, and grab it down.
- Turn the top so that what you just displaced sits over a different column.
- Grab that column down too.
- Turn the top back, then undo both grabs — first one, then the other.
The second grab is the whole trick. It parks the first grab’s damage in a column that gets restored on the way back out, so both unfinished faces come back whole apart from the one piece you meant to move. Aim it the same way every time and it works for any piece, which is exactly why it is worth learning as a shape and not as a sequence.
Edges: a midge and two wings
Each edge slot holds three pieces: the midge in the middle — this is your 3×3 edge — and two wings flanking it. An edge is paired when both wings sit beside their midge, matching colors on both faces. Twelve edges to pair, then the cube reduces to a 3×3.
Freeslice pairing
Pair edges with inner-slice turns, and don’t repair the centers in between — that’s the “free”:
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Slice — turn an inner layer so a wing rides next to its matching midge. The pair forms at a front edge. Two inserts do almost all of this work, and which one you reach for depends only on which gets the wing in the right way round: R U' R' or F R' F' R.
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Store — move the finished edge into the top or bottom layer, out of the working zone, and drop an unpaired edge into its place.
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Repeat — keep slicing and storing. The centers look wrecked mid-run. Ignore them.
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Flip — when a wing sits next to its midge but facing the wrong way, no amount of slicing will pair them. Turn the group over in place:
R U R' F R' F' R -
Restore — when no pairable edges remain, turn the slices back. The centers snap back with them.
You already know most of it: the last four moves are the second insert above, and the first three are the first insert with the middle turn reversed. Seven outer turns, and that is what makes it safe — an outer turn carries both wings of a group together, so this algorithm is mechanically incapable of breaking a pair you have already made. Fire it whenever a wing faces the wrong way. It is also the same seven moves on a 4×4 — nothing in it counts layers, so there is no wide-move trap to fall into.
The top and bottom layers hold eight finished edges between them; the rest pair in the middle as you go. When only two unpaired edges remain, there is nowhere left to store spares — the last two groups get their own treatment, next lesson — the same flip, aimed by hand.