2) Key concepts

Key concepts to grasp: Sledgehammer and workbench

Mastering the 'Sledgehammer' greatly simplifies solving the cube.

This section and its subsessions show more details about the Sledgehammer

3) Jolly move The 'Workbench' approach engine.

The 'jolly move' is the technique used here to solve the Rubik's Cube.

Placing a cubie means moving it directly to its final position. The 'Jolly move' takes a different approach by bringing both the cubie you want to place and the cubie currently in that position to the 'workbench' first.

Once the two cubies are on the 'workbench', they are swapped."

Finally, the cubie you want to place reaches its correct position.

Overview a more detailed tutorial of the 'Workbench' approach (formerly called 'Y')

In the example below, the cubie to be placed is the 'edge' RG (already inside the 'Workbench'), and its destination is the edge reb (right-equator-back), which is currently occupied by a cubie without colours.

After the step 1 both the cubies are inside the 'Workbench'

The step 2 swaps the cubies

The step 3 brings the cubie RG to its final destination

1)	E	Brings the slot at position reb onto the workbench at position ref That move demonstrates why it's always better to have cubies we don't care about (those inside the workbench).
2)	R'   F	Brings the edge RG onto the position: ref . The cube at position ref (at the beginning of this move) goes somewhere on the cube, but we do not care about it.
3)	E'	Cancels the first rotation also bringing RG onto its final position This set of moves has the characteristic of not interfering with any of the cubies outside the workbench, making it effective for solving configurations (even from other methods) that would otherwise be difficult to solve.

Believe it or not, this is all you need to solve the Rubik's cube.

That's why mastering the Sledgehammer is the key.

The technique of using preparatory moves before applying an algorithm (the "setup move") is well established, and this set of moves has already been defined by others ("setup move" "Sledgehammer" "undo move") What this approach brings is a clear and consistent method that always follows the same path to solve the cube.

4) The Trap What prevents many from succeeding.

With the 'Jolly move', you can easily achieve the configuration below.

Leaving the slots for the cubies rdf and ref unsorted simplifies the solving process.

Repeating the 'Sledgehammer' (U F' U' F) Places the cubies muf , ruf and ref

This section shows more details about the Sledgehammer

This page shows what the arrows Arrows are.

Sometime, all the edges are sorted excepted for the cubies RY and YB being swapped This is a key point in the solving process because makes many fail until they realize...

The swap occours because OY and YG are misplaced. That's 'The trap'!

There are several ways to escape the trap:

• The trap The 'Sledgehammer' based solution.
• The trap The 'intuitive' solution (explains what produces the swap) .
• The Trap The more 'elegant' solution.

5) Bouncing

This is the last step. It starts from the following configuration, switches the 'Workbench' from the 'original' to the 'new Workbench' and adopts only this 'Sledgehammer' (R F' R' F) or its reverse (F' R F R')

All it does is bounce cubies between level 1 and level 3.

Watch this video: 'changing perspective'