Phase 1 gets you solving; this lesson strips the wasted motion out of it. Three upgrades, and none is genuinely new — each reuses a trigger you already own. Hold the cube with white on the bottom, yellow on top from the first move to the last: after this lesson you never flip it again.
1. Build the white cross on the bottom
Stop building the cross on top and turning the cube over. Build it straight onto the bottom face, with yellow up the whole time.
The recipe: get a white edge into the top layer with its white sticker facing up, turn U until its side color sits directly above the matching center, then double-turn that face — the edge drops home without disturbing the others. An edge stuck in the bottom layer facing the wrong way? Double-turn its face to pop it up, then place it properly. If the white sticker faces sideways instead of up, insert it the way you did in Phase 1 — intuitively — just aimed downwards.
Why bother: the flip cost you a whole-cube rotation and a re-read of every face. Killing it means one grip for the entire solve, and the solved cross stays safely out of sight while you work above it.
2. Yellow cross: give the Hook its own algorithm
Lowercase means wide: f turns the front two layers together — the F
face plus the slice behind it. So f-sexy-f’,
f R U R' U' f', is just F-sexy-F’ with a deeper grip.
Same fingers, same trigger, nothing new to memorize — but it solves the Hook
in one go instead of two.
f R U R' U' f'
SolvingHook
Starts at the case. Full colour is what this step solves, dim is already solved and has to survive it, grey is further down the method.
Open the full case page →
F R U R' U' F'
SolvingLine
Starts at the case. Full colour is what this step solves, dim is already solved and has to survive it, grey is further down the method.
Open the full case page →
F R U R' U' F' f R U R' U' f'
SolvingDot
Starts at the case. Full colour is what this step solves, dim is already solved and has to survive it, grey is further down the method.
Open the full case page →- Hook — hold the yellow L in the front-right, run f-sexy-f’. Done in one algorithm instead of Phase 1’s two.
- Line — unchanged: hold it horizontal, F-sexy-F’.
- Dot — Line algorithm, then Hook algorithm, back to back with no re-grip in between. Two algorithms instead of three, and no re-reading the cube mid-case.
3. Orient corners without the flip
Everything up to the last step is unchanged: yellow cross, edges aligned, corners positioned. The old Step 7 flipped the cube; skip that. Yellow stays on top.
Turn U until an unsolved corner — one with no yellow on top — sits at the front-right. Read where its yellow sticker points:
Yellow to the right is R' D' R D twice; yellow to the front is D' R' D R twice — the first algorithm undone, the same moves inverted in reverse order.
Then turn only U to bring the next unsolved corner to the front-right and repeat. When all four corners show yellow, a final U turn or two lines the side colors up — solved.