4x4

The 4x4 or the Rubik's Revenge is the cube that you'll learn to solve in this section. You will learn Reduction and Yau. Those are the easiest methods with the least amount of parities or none at all.

The 4x4 was released in 1981 by Péter Sebestény. It was going to be called the Sebestény Cube but was changed to the Rubik's Revenge to attract fans of the 3x3. It is difficult to solve because not only is it bigger but there are also no fixed center pieces.

Once you've solved you'll pretty much be able to solve any X by X cube larger than the 3x3 as it will essentially be the same. You'll also be able to solve any larger even sided cube using the reduction method.

Methods + Algs

Centers

Edges/3x3 Stage

Completed

Reduction

Reduction is a widely used method by both beginners and advanced cubers. It has 2 steps before you go in to the 3x3 stage. You will make the centers, make the edges and then make solve the cube using the methods of 3x3. It'll be helpful to know 4-look last layer before you start this.

Let's take a look:

1. Centers

This part is intuitive as is the majority of this cubes solve. You'll have to know where all of the pieces go by memory so you can go fluidly. If you have 2 centers in the wrong places it will mess up the 3x3 method. One way to do this would be to make a 1x2 bar on one face. Then you make the second 1x2 and put it in right next to it. Put that on the bottom and do the same on top with the opposite colour. You have to make sure that you don't mess up the bottom layer. So you put one of the 1x2 bars on top and line up the other 1x2 below it on the front face. If it's on the right face do Rr U Rr' and if it's on the left do Ll' U Ll. The next 2 are the same but for the fourth center do the immediate center to the side rather than the opposite.

2. Edges

This is another part that is mostly intuitive and you'll have to play around to fix all the edges. As you get better you can learn more edge pairing methods like 3-3-2-2-2.

Basically for this you take 2 of the same edge pieces and line them up so that when you slice over they join to make an edge. Then you do R or R' replace it with an unsolved edge. It get's trickier when you gey to the last 4 edges but with practise you should be able to get to solve all the edges in 40 sec to a minute

3. 3x3 Stage and Parity

Funnily enough the last stage is to solve it like a 3x3 using all of the outer edges. But the problem is you may get parity. It may look daunting at first and yes, it does take time to memorize but once you've got it down you'll be sweet as.

OLL Parity: (Rr)2 B2 U2 (Ll) U2 (Rr)' U2 (Rr) U2 F2 (Rr) F2 (Ll)' B2 (Rr)2

Things that may help:

This site goes more deeply into explaining how to do each step.

You can print each page out using Ctrl+P if you'd like to learn in a device/wi-fi free zone.

These videos from MeMyselfandPi will help with learning the reduction method. Don't worry that the algs on the second video are/look different in the video as the ones on the page are better exectued. They may be 8 years old but they certainly do the trick.

Rosehill Cubing

4x4