The Cube: The Ultimate Guide to the World's Bestselling Puzzle - Secrets, Stories, Solutions

Yes this book does have solutions for solving the 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, 6x6, and even 7x7 cubes. However their solutions are designed to be "beginner" solutions in that they are fairly easy to learn but not super-efficient in terms of getting the fastest possible times. There are other books that provide faster (i.e. more difficult to memorize) algorithms for solving a Rubik's Cube.Where this book really shines is as a historical guide to the Rubik's Cube and other related puzzles. A good chunk of the book is devoted to the origins of the original Rubik's Cube and how it came to be a worldwide phenomenon in the 80s.There is also a large section devoted to other puzzles that have been inspired by the Rubik's Cube. Many of these custom puzzles are truly amazing. There are a lot of nice full color pictures of the various puzzles to dazzle you (or drool over if you collect puzzles). This book is very current, containing puzzles created as recently as 2008.Anyone who loves Rubik-type puzzles will absolutely love this book. And even the casual cuber will likely enjoy the wealth of information packed into this book.

Never thought I'd be able to sleve the cube, but I'm getting pretty quick at it now.This book will help you.I was skeptical and really thought it wouldn't help, but the illustrations were spot on and it helped me learn what I needed really quick.

A beautiful book. Great artwork! Great photos of Erno Rubik and many cube variations. The cube solutions, however, are a mess. The pages are multi-colored with multi-font styles. Difficult to read! The notations are non-standards, but not impossible to follow. The algorithms for the 2x2x2 cube don't work for me. Are they correct? I am finding better solutions on YouTube!

This is a great book with detailed solutions for 2x2x2, 3x3x3, and 4x4x4. It is instructive that the authors deliberately left out much of the more routine details for 5x5x5, 6x6x6 and 7x7x7 so as to force the reader to internalize and re-apply the moves learned from the previous simpler cases to the latter ones.Some errors in the book to take note of:Page 86: the 4th notation for the E1 diagram should be F-clockwise.Page 112: the first notation in the last diagram of 4.1 should be F-counterclockwise.Page 118: the first line underneath the H4 sequence should read (5)->(4)->(1)->(5).Pages 123 & 129: V1 should be written as V1 = K1 Rs down K2 Rs up.Page 132: two instances of U3 in the S3 sequence should be replaced by U2.

I purchased this book already knowing how to solve the 3x3.The first part of the book is fantastic.It details the history of the cube, and related puzzles, a great bio of Mr Rubik himself, and excellent pictures of anything you would want to see, from collectibles to knock offs.But my primary reason for purchasing the book was the solutions to the various sizes of the cubes and this is where it falls short.The decision to use non standard colors was very confusing to me (the red and pink used look similar).There would be 2 pages to describe something simple then a quick sentence when an advanced method is needed.To sum up, great for Cube history but get your solutions elsewhere.

I bought this book for my grandson and he read it from end to end. The next time I saw him he was excited to show me the tricks he learned from the book with his Rubick's cube!

I unfairly rate this book a one, as I try to understand all the different arrows, back, front, sides, ect. It would take me awhile to completely understand all the dynamics to this ULTIMATE GUIDE. If I do figure it out completely, then I can rate this book fairly. I would hate to think that I wasted my money for someone elses gain. I bought a cube back in the 80's and a small paperback book that came with it. The instructions were simple enough to where I could finally do it without reading the book. I could do the cube quite easily with each try. I even had my friends mix it all up for me to make it harder, I was so determine that I did it with in a couple of weeks and that was thirty years ago. It eventually became to boring and I kind of lost interest. I could do it as fast as twenty five seconds, sometimes lest and that was thirty years ago. In 2013 I was teaching in an elementary school and saw a rubiks cube in a classroom that belonged to a teacher. I tried to do it but I just couldn't remember. I don't know what happend to my 1st cube or the instruction book and I regret not taking care of it. So here I am doing it again, and this ULTMATE GUIDE cannot compare to my easy book I had thirty years ago.

Very disappointed in this book. While the author may be an expert on the history and mathematics of the cube. The solutions, formatting and printing leave much to be desired. The books is at its best when describing the invention and spread of the cube phenomena. The author's personal involvement in the importation of the cube to the U.K. is genuinely fascinating. The book really falls on its face when it comes to the solutions. Over the years, universal notation and diagrams have been developed to describe cube solutions. One need look no further than the actual Rubik's website to find them. The author ignores forty years of progress and uses his own notation and descriptions. Don't look for the word algorithm in this book, even though it was written by a mathematician. There is also a universal color scheme, which is thrown out in favor of a confusing non-standard palette. Reasonable minds can differ on the "best" way to solve the cube, but there is an accepted "beginners" way. (again, look no further than the Rubik's website) You won't find it here. All additional solutions build on this unusual method. As others have said, the print is small, the side bars are particularly hard to read due to contrast issue. Words you won't find in the index: algorithm, OLL, PLL, or parity.