How to solve a 2x3x3

The 2x3x3 is an interesting puzzle and people often struggle to figure it out, in this guide I hope to explain simply how to solve a 2x3x3. The top fewest moves solvers reduce their 3x3x3 into a 2x3x3 but obviously use a far more advanced method to solve the 2x3x3 section.

Step 1: Buy a good 2x3x3

There are not that many 2x3x3 options out there but I would simply recommend getting the QiYi 2x3x3 which is only £5 here.

Step 2: learn the notation

This is the same as a 3x3x3 but there is less notation, R moves are only possible as R2s.

Step 3: Solve the cross

This is similar to on a 3x3x3 but actually slightly easier, I recommend solving a yellow cross.

Find the yellow edges and move them each down with R2 moves, make sure to get the colour scheme correct, maybe have a normal cube infront of you.

Step 4: solve the corners

Hold the corner ontop of where it needs to go and do the following algorithm once:

OLL (step 6 of my 3x3x3 tutorial) will automatically be solved now.

Step 5: Permute the corners

You need to learn the following algorithm:

If you have 2 corners correctly positioned as shown:

Then do the algorithm once, holding the two correct corners to the left.

If you have the 2 correct corners positioned diagonally as shown:

Then do the algorithm once from anywhere and you will have the 1st case

Step 6: Permute the edges

On the qiyi 2x3x3, M slice PLLs will actually work now, however, you may prefer doing specific algorithms for the 2x3x3. There are also ‘parity’ cases you can get.