Pretty Patterns on Rubik's Magic Cube
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
This page assumes that you have a Rubik's Cube. In fact, I'm going to assume that you have a solved cube. This is about making regular patterns on the faces of the Cube, and beginning from START makes it much easier. I am not the first person to make these patterns, but I did work out all the steps given here.
I hope to add pictures soon.
Simple Checkerboard
This is the simplest of all patterns. Each face has a checkerboard pattern on it, made up of the color of the face and the color of the opposite face. To make it just turn each center "slice" one half turn. It doesn't matter what order you do it in. By center slice I mean the set of cubies containing the very center of four faces. There are three. You can also think of it as turning opposite sides in opposite direction1.
1Technically the centers can't move relative to one another, but I think of them as moving around, especially in the Spots pattern
The Spots PatternThis is also a simple pattern to make. It uses center slices, as well. The pattern is simply a center of one color surrounded by another color on each face. First find the center slice through the front and top sides of the Cube. Give it a quarter-turn forward. Then do the same to the center slice on the left and top sides. Now give the first slice a quarter-turn back and repeat on the other slice. This is the Spots pattern.
Crosses
There are probably better ways to make this pattern that the one described here, but this is the only one I know.
The easiest way to describe my solution to this pattern is using a system of naming moves described at Cubic Puzzles - The SIMPLEST Solutions. The move is written x R y, where x and y indicate columns on the front face. They are numbered from left to right, so 1 would be the leftmost column and 3, the rightmost. After you get used to reading this notation, performing the move is easy. First, turn column x forward, that is, so the top cubie moves to the bottom. Then turn the bottom right, so the left cubie becomes the right. (The direction is indicated by the letter: R for right, L for left, but I always use rights in this pattern.) Then turn column y forward and the bottom left. Turn x back, bottom right, y back, bottom left. If x and y are not equal, the move is always a 3-cycle (if you do the move three times, you're back where you started). To make the crosses pattern, do 1 R 3 on the front. Then, turn the whole Cube clockwise one quarter-turn around the front center. Do another 1 R 3 with the new bottom. Now turn the whole Cube so that the front becomes the bottom and the original top (before you turned the cube on its side) is the front. Repeat the steps with the new front and bottom. Do this four times. You should now have a ring of crosses around the Cube, but the left and right faces should still be solid. To put crosses on every face, turn the Cube so that a blank face is at the top, and do the whole four crosses pattern again.
1Technically the centers can't move relative to one another, but I think of them as moving around, especially in the Spots pattern
