1 How to solve a 2x2x2 (Guimond method) by Oscar Roth Andersen (Odder) How to solve a 2x2x2 (Guimond method) Orientation The First step is to orient the pieces. For this, you choose two opposite colours and you see them as the same, for instance if white is opposite yellow, white and yellow will be the same colour for this step. The number of cases to learn is not long at all, and if you don’t have any of these cases, you will be able to set it up into one of these cases in just 1-2 moves. But first of all you have to make sure that you have a face with 3 oriented pieces, if you can’t find this, you should be able to set it up into one of these cases in just 1-2 moves. Hold it so if you do (R2 L2)/x2/[R2] (same rotation, just written in different ways, whenever you see a bottom case, you will have to do that rotation) it looks like this: When that is done, you will have one of these cases on the top (I only included cases with already one corner oriented, so if you do not have that, you should be able to set up such a case in just one move or so, but make sure you still have 3 oriented on the bottom layer) F L’ U L F’ L’ U L L’ U L D’ L U’ L’ L’ U’ L D’ L U L’ L’ U2 L L F’ L’ F ( L’ U L U’ ) * 2 ( L U’ L’ U ) * 2 D’ L2 U L’ L2 U’ L’ 2 How to solve a 2x2x2 (Guimond method) by Oscar Roth Andersen (Odder) Separation Well done! You have now oriented all the pieces, by now you should have 2 opposite faces, only counting the same 2 colours. What you want to do now, is to separate these colours from each other, so you if you had white/yellow, you will now try to solve it in a way so you have white on one face and yellow on the opposite face. For this you have these cases: First picture is the bottom layer; the second picture is the upper layer. L2 U L2 L2 L2 D U L2 L2 U L2 U L2 3 How to solve a 2x2x2 (Guimond method) by Oscar Roth Andersen (Odder) Permute Both Layers (PBL) Congratulations, by now it should look almost solved; the only thing you need is to swap some pieces. Are you ready? Let’s go! For these images, the thing on the front-left is your front face and front-right is your right face. When you recognize these, you look if a layer is “solved”, “does have a block” or “messed up……” look closely at the pictures to see where I put the blocks, (if it is solved or messed up, it does not matter at all how you orient it before executing the algorithm) L R U2 L2 This case is messed up on both layers. L2 U L2 D U L2 U L2 This case has a block on both layers, have these blocks in the back. L’ U2 L U L’ U2 L F’ L F L’ This case has one layer solved and one with a block. Hold the solved as the bottom layer, and have the block on your right. Yay! You got it! L’ U L’ F2 L U’ L This case has a block on the upper layer, but is messed up on the bottom layer. If it is the other way around you can just flip the 2x2x2 upside down and you will get this case. L’ U L U F2 U L’ U’ L D’ L2 This case has one layer solved, and one messed up. Hold the solved layer as the bottom layer, and the messed up layer as the upper layer