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
双层转动
小写字母或带“w”后缀表示该面连同相邻的内层一起转动。
Rw右面 + 中间层（等同于 r）。
Uw上面 + 第二层（等同于 u）。
中层转动
单独的内层转动，不涉及任何外面。
M中间层，方向与 L 相同。
E赤道层，方向与 D 相同。
S竖直中层，方向与 F 相同。
整体翻转
翻转整个魔方而不转动任何面。
x沿 R 轴翻转整个魔方（如同一次 R 转动）。
y沿 U 轴翻转整个魔方（如同一次 U 转动）。
z沿 F 轴翻转整个魔方（如同一次 F 转动）。
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.
