Customer Reviews

Speedsolving the Cube: Easy-to-Follow, Step-by-Step Instructions for Many Popular 3-D Puzzles

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book seems best suited to people who already know how to solve the cube and who would like to find out how to improve their solutions. In my case, I hit a wall with my homebrew solution at about 60 seconds. While 1 minute solves are nice, it's not impressive in a world where a 20 second solve is not terribly competitive. This book seems to have the solution for that. It's too early to claim success, but what I've worked through so far is very good.

Would this book be suitable for a cubing novice? That's a tough call. The book does start from scratch teaching a basic solution, but I feel other resources online are a little clearer for the absolute beginner. However, a dedicated learner could work entirely from the book. Just keep in mind that pace is very quick, and the author doesn't do that much hand holding.

Would this book be suitable for an experienced speed cuber? That's hard to say, since I'm not in that category. If you follow another solving system, the book should be a very easy introduction to the authors strategy. I suspect that no matter where you are, you'll get a few new algorithms and tricks. There's also the 2x2x2, 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 solutions, which ought to provide additional value to the hardcore cuber.

This book is deceptively short. Although it weighs in at barely 160 pages, there's really a lot of content if you work through the material. It's taken a week to work through the first 50 pages, and that's just the intro material. I suspect it will be months, if not years, before I've even come close to exhausting what the book has to offer. In that regard, it's a tremendous value, and I can wholeheartedly recommend the book.

I had tried to learn the so-called "speed cubing" methods online and had been completely frustrated. Dan Harris lays it all out perfectly: it is very easy to follow and understand. That doesn't mean that the technique is all that easy to learn: with a massive amount of algorithms to memorize it will certainly be an undertaking of some months before you can claim complete mastery of the CFOP method.
The sections on the 2x2, 4x4, and 5x5 cubes are also very easy to follow. There is one typo that I found in the 5x5 chapter. The algorithms in Table 8.3, p125 are wrong: they are written (R r) U (R' r') U (R r) (U2 u2) (R' r') (R r) and (R2 r2) U (R2 r2) U (R2 r2) (U2 u2) (R2 r2). I spent a frustrating 10 minutes trying to figure out why I couldn't complete the centers. I found that the correct algoritms are (R r) U (R' r') U (R r) U2 (R' r') and (R2 r2) U (R2 r2) U (R2 r2) U2 (R2 r2).
At the end of the book there is also a chapter that has algorithms for all sorts of cool patterns that can be applied to an already finished cube.
This is a great book and no true Rubik's fanatic should be without it!

I like the book a lot - it shows me how to solve all the cubes.
But it has quite a number of errors which are irritating. Fortunately the author has put up a correction-list at

[...]
I have troubles with the algorithm on page 132, 8.11. Am i just doing it wrong all the time - or is this another error in the book?

Well, all in all I can still recommend the book to anyone who likes the cubes!

I think this book is very well written. Dan Harris clearly knows his way around a Rubik's cube. My favorite part of the book was the section on the history of the cube and the stats.

Even though the book is good, it is difficult to solve the cube without actually seeing someone do it. I learned how to solve the Rubik's cube from a YouTube video by Dan Brown. I think his YouTube user name is Pogobot.

Brandon Simpson

If you're not content to merely solve rubik's cube, and want to learn to solve it as fast as possible, then this book is packed with the information you need. it is not really aimed at beginners. It does include a "beginner's solution" early on, but this serves primarily as a starting point for explaining the advanced techniques that follow. The idea here is that the beginner's solution allows you to solve the cube with a minimum of memorization in about seven steps; then by memorizing many more cases presented in successive chapters, you can condense these to about four steps.

There are many variants of the algorithms presented in this book, and some of the variants may work better for you. You can find lists of algorithms on the internet and select what works best for you. Everybody has their own favorites (and the algorithms presented on the author's website are sometimes different than those in the book!).

The book doesn't include everything I would like to see, but it does contain a ton of information which can get you a long way.

What the book does include:

Complete presentation of the CFOP method for solving the cube, plus some expert refinements thereof.

Detailed explanation of how to solve the first two layers, including various advanced tricks to speed it up.

Methods for solving cubes of other sizes (2x2x2, 4x4x4, 5x5x5).

What the book does not really cover:

How the algorithms for solving the last layer work, and how to discover your own (which for me is the really fun part)

Practical tips (eg how to lubricate the cube, where to put your hands, how a competition works)

There are some errors, but there is a helpful list of errata on the author's webite.

While there is a ton of information on the web and YouTube about ways to solve the Rubik's cube, this book distills much of that information into a very concise and easy to learn format that should appeal to a wide range of people. If you just want to learn a beginner's method to solve the cube, you can do that but the book is definitely catered to those who want to go beyond just solving it and teaching how to solve it fast!

I really enjoyed the sections on the 2x2x2, 4x4x4, and 5x5x5 cubes as well and was surprised how easy they were to learn.

I just have two small gripes with the book, both of which have to do with the printing and binding more than the content (which is why I still gave it 5 stars). First, the book has a number of printing errors in it, mostly in the 5x5x5 section. Fortunately if you go to Dan Harris' website he has all the corrections posted. Secondly, it would have been nice to have this book published with spiral binding (even if the book cost more) - it's just impossible to lay it down on a table to look at the algorithms without placing a large heavy object on the book to keep it open.

Speedsolving the Cube does include a beginner method, one that segues directly into intermediate and advanced methods. This book fills in all the gaps by explaining the history, terminology and, most importantly, the algorithms for speed solving. I'm currently working on F2L, and I can see that there is enough content here to keep a cuber going at all levels of ability. This is a great portable resource.

This book was very good and helped me to solve the 3x3x3 and 4x4x4 Rubik's Cubes, but when I was solving the 5x5x5 the Algorithm on page 125, Table 8.3 was incorrect. Also table 8.11 on page 132 had errors.

I taught myself much of the methodology outlined in this book by scrounging around the Internet for various algorithms, etc. Dan Harris' website ([...]) was instrumental in teaching me how to plan ahead, and he's used his skills at creating written tutorials for a very hands-on hobby to write an excellent book.

This book has several advantages over the way that most of us have had to learn our way around the cube. First, it's laid out in a linear fashion, so ideas are introduced to the reader in a very organized way, interspersed with lots of examples. Second, through the format of a published book, a comprehensive set of the many algorithms needed for a complete speedsolving solution are presented in a bound paper copy. This is perfect for someone who wants to carry the book and a cube in their backpack or messenger bag and keep notes about which algorithms are most comfortable, which have been committed to memory, etc. I bought this book specifically for Dan's great presentation of the last layer orientation algorithms, which I have yet to learn. Having all of the algorithms organized in such a thoughtful way, in a medium that I can easily carry with me is exactly what I've needed.

Great work, Dan!

This book is really cool if you wanna know more about the cube, there are some history, facts and different solutions from beginners and then more and more advanced. Very good start point for speed cubing