FAQ on the Rubik's cube

FAQ

How to dismantle my cube?

Twist the upper layer of half a quarter of tour (or of an eighth of tour if you prefer). Now the 4 edge cubes (cubbies with 2 colors) are exactly above the edge cubes of the second layer. All you need to do is to slide a flat screwdriver or a knife between the first layer edge cube and the one of the second layer and to lever it up : the edge cube of the upper layer jumps and its easy to dismantle the rest of the cube.
BE CAREFUL: this is valid only for the real Rubik's Cube, the one which have the Rubik's Cube logo (and I'm not sure its valid for the Rubik's Cube of the 80's). For the others, the mechanism isn't the same and you mustn't lever it up! There's a screw in the central cubes which can only be accessed by removing the stickers.

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My cube's stickers are already gone!

That's not surprising! The original stickers on a Rubik's cube don't last long. There are composed of 2 elements : a very thin plastic protecting film which goes off rapidly, and a colored paper directly stuck on the cube, but its colors goes off quickly when the protecting film is gone. Here some solutions :

Ways to make the stickers last longer :
- Here is an interesting method that Brian Johnston e-mailed me :
  he uses clear flat (non-shiny) nail polish around the edges of all the stickers to keep them in place. It works like a charm and best of all prevents others from peeling and replacing the stickers.
- some people use some transparent adhesive paper (available in hypermarket) more thick and more resistant than adhesive tape. You mustn't wait stickers to be totally destroyed : when the protecting film of the stickers starts to go off, all you need to do is to put this transparent adhesive paper : cut it smaller than the stickers so that it doesn't go off when you play with the cube (even if the edge of the stickers gets a little damaged).
Replacing some old stickers :
- some other people use some colored adhesive tape. You can find some various colors almost matching with the cube colors. Rather choose a smooth tape in order to avoid degradation.
- personally, I rebuild new facelets : I cut some colored square which approach the original colors in magazines or something else. Then I coat with plastic with some adhesive tape that I curve behind the colored squares. Then I stick the squares on the Rubik's Cube facelets with neoprene glue (since it is a plastic-plastic contact since the adhesive tape is curved behind the squares. The result is a cube that last one year ore more. But you must count half a dozen of hours to do a perfect work which will last long... (choosing and finding the colors isn't the fastest thing).
  Advantage: the facelets last a long time.
  Inconveniences: very long to do; hard to clean the cube when you must renew it (neoprene glue persistent).

Where can I buy a Rubik's cube?

You can find it in hypermarkets and toy stores about 10$ and of course you can buy one on the internet

I have a Rubik's Cube with pictures on it, how do I orient the center pieces?

If you are already familiar with a normal Rubik's Cube (without pictures), you should be able to solve it without problem, at least for the first two layers if you take care to the orientation of the center pieces while you solve the cube. Indeed, for the first layer, all you have to do is to put the back edge cube behind the center piece, the front edge cube ahead, ...
For the second layer it is completely possible to do the same thing. For the last layer, it can be harder depending on your solving method for the last layer. With the method I present on my site for solving a normal cube, there's no problem since the main algorithms preserve the central pieces orientation.

However if don't manage to do it, here are some algorithms that may help you:

U R L U2 R' L' U R L U2 R' L' : rotate the upper face center 180 degrees
F B' L R' U D' F' U' D L' R F' B U : rotate the upper face center clockwise 90 degrees and the front face center anti-clockwise 90 degrees
R L' F2 B2 R L' U R L' F2 B2 R L' D' : rotate the upper face center clockwise 90 degrees and the down face center anti-clockwise 90 degrees

To understand how it works : all you have to do is to review the movements for each face:
example for the first algorithm (U R L U2 R' L' U R L U2 R' L'):
U: U,U²,U,U² : U⁶ = U⁴ + U², so the U face center will turn 360 degrees and then rotate 180 degrees
R: R,R',R,R' : R⁰, so the R face center will not move
L: L,L',L,L' : L⁰, so the L face center will not move

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Contact: godotcg-cubeland@yahoo.fr - URL: http://cubeland.free.fr