Before any letter means anything, agree on how you are holding the cube. Pick up the cube with one colour on top (this becomes U, Up) and one colour facing you (this becomes F, Front). The other four faces fall into place: the face on your right is R, on your left L, away from you B (Back), and underneath D (Down). Hold it like this and the six letters never change meaning, no matter how scrambled the cube is.
The standard view: U on top, F toward you, R on your right. Every algorithm assumes you are holding the cube this way.
A single R turn, looping. Watch the top-right edge swing away from you — that is clockwise.
Read a real algorithm
Reading an algorithm is just two questions, one move at a time: which layer (the letter) and how does it turn (the symbol). Nothing more. Let's decode the most famous beginner trigger on the cube — the Sune, named by Swedish speedcuber Lars Petrus. It twists three corners and reads like this:
Watch it run, then read the seven tokens left to right against the list.
R — no symbol, so turn the right layer 90° clockwise.
U — no symbol, turn the up layer clockwise.
R' — the prime means turn the right layer 90° counter-clockwise.
U — up layer clockwise again.
R — right layer clockwise.
U2 — the 2 means a 180° turn of the up layer.
R' — right layer counter-clockwise to finish.
Naming pieces and slots
The same six letters name the pieces too, by listing the faces a piece touches. An edge touches two faces (the edge between U and F is UF); a corner touches three (the corner of U, R and F is URF). For a piece, order doesn't matter — FR and RF are the same edge. But corner names are read clockwise, so URF, RFU and FUR all name the same corner. When you need to talk about a single sticker, the first letter is the face you are looking at: the U-sticker of that corner leads with U.
UFedge — touches 2 faces (order doesn't matter)
URFcorner — touches 3 faces, read clockwise
ワイド回転
小文字または「w」の接尾辞は、その面と隣接する内側の層を一緒に動かすことを意味します。
Rw右面 + 中央層（rと同じ）。
Uw上面 + 第2層（uと同じ）。
スライス回転
外側の面に触れない、単一の内側層。
M中央層、Lと同じ方向。
E赤道層、Dと同じ方向。
S立て層、Fと同じ方向。
キューブの回転
どの面も回さずにキューブ全体を回します。
xR軸を中心にキューブ全体を回します（Rの回転のように）。
yU軸を中心にキューブ全体を回します（Uの回転のように）。
zF軸を中心にキューブ全体を回します（Fの回転のように）。
The three notation mix-ups everyone hits
M “looks backwards.” The middle slice M follows the L face, not R — so an M turn goes the opposite way to what you'd expect from R. Judge slice direction by the left face.
Lowercase isn't a secret move. On a 3×3, u and Uw are the same thing (a wide turn). It only changes meaning on bigger cubes.
A double turn has no “wrong” direction.R2 and R2' end in the same state; the prime only tells your hands which way to spin.
