Rubik's Cube Notation

There are six faces of the cube: F (front, toward you), B (back), U (up), D (down), L (left), and R (right). The same letters are used for turns. R is a clockwise 90° twist of the Right face, U is a clockwise 90° twist of the Up face. The ' indicates a counter-clockwise 90° twist, for example R'. A 2 indicates a 180° double twist, for example R2. A lower case letter indicates a "wide" twist involving both a face and its adjoining middle slice, for example r. Some people use Rw instead of r, and so on for all the wide moves. For visually oriented people, below are diagrams which show how to turn a face when looking at the front of the cube.

Face Moves

F F' 2 F2 f (or Fw) B B' 2 B2 R R' 2 R2 r (or Rw) r' (or Rw') L L' 2 L'2 l (or Lw) l' (or Lw) U U' 2 U2 u (or Uw) D D' 2 D2 d (or Dw)

Slice Moves

M M' 2 M2 H (or E') H' (or E) 2 H2 (or E'2) S S' 2 S2

I use H for the Horizonal slice moves, and the direction is the same as U. Other sources use E (E for Equator) for the Horizontal slice moves, but the direction is the same as D.

Whole Cube Moves

x y

© 2020 Eric Krohn. Creative Commons License CC BY-SA
Rubik's Cube Notation by Eric Krohn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.