How to Solve a 4x4 Rubik's Cube: Beginner Guide

How is a 4x4 different from a 3x3?

• It has 56 visible pieces: 24 centres, 24 edges and 8 corners (Wikipedia). Each edge of the cube has two edge pieces sitting side by side. Once those two match in colour and face the same way, this guide calls them an edge pair.
• No centre stays fixed. All four centre pieces on each face can move, so you have to put the colours in the right order yourself.
• It has parity. After you turn it into a 3x3, sometimes one edge pair is flipped, or two edge pairs have swapped places, in a way that can never happen on a 3x3. The cube can still be solved; you just need one more algorithm.

!A scrambled 4x4 Rubik's Cube Photo: [Mike Gonzalez (TheCoffee) / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rubiks_revenge_scrambled.jpg), CC BY-SA 3.0

New notation. A letter on its own, like R, is still the outer layer. Rw means turning the two right layers together (w stands for wide). 2R means turning only the second layer from the right, while the outer layer stays still. Uw, Dw and 2L work the same way. The ' mark and the number 2 mean the same as in Rubik's Cube notation.

Step 1: Build the centres

1. You start with (input)
3. After the formula

Each face has four centre pieces. Two pieces of the same colour next to each other make a bar, and two bars side by side make a centre block. This whole step comes down to one idea: use Rw to bring a column from the front up to the top, turn U to put it in the right spot, then Rw' to send the other column back. The picture above shows the move you'll use most, Rw U2 Rw': the right column of the front face and a column of the top face swap places, and the centre blocks on the other four faces don't change.

Since no centre is fixed, place the colours in the cube's correct order: white is opposite yellow; with white on top and green in front, red is on the right, blue at the back and orange on the left. If you forget, look at a corner: its three stickers tell you which three faces sit next to each other.

Go in this order: white, yellow, then the four side faces. In the pictures for this step, only the centres are coloured.

The white face

1. You start with (input)
3. After the formula

There's nothing to protect yet, so turn as freely as you like. Join two white pieces into a bar, then make one more bar. Put one bar in the left column of the top face and the other standing upright in the right column of the front face, then turn Rw once: all four white pieces end up together.

The yellow face

1. You start with (input)
3. After the formula

Flip the cube so the white face is on the bottom. From now on, every Rw needs an Rw' to undo it, or the white centre block will lose a column. In the picture, the top and the front each have a yellow bar in the right column. Do Rw U2 Rw': the bar on the front goes up and over to the left column, and the yellow face is done while the white face stays whole.

The third side face

1. You start with (input)
3. After the formula

Hold the cube with white on the left and yellow on the right, and keep it that way until the end of step 1. The Rw, U and F layers never touch those two faces. In the picture, the front has a green bar in the left column and the top has a green bar in the right column. One Rw' brings the bar on top down to the front. The fourth side face works like the yellow face: every Rw comes with an Rw'.

The last two faces

1. You start with (input)
3. After the formula

The last two faces always finish at the same time. If each face has one bar of the other colour, turn U and F so the two stray bars sit like in the picture: the green bar in the left column of the top, the red bar in the right column of the front. Then do Rw U2 Rw'.

1. You start with (input)
3. After the formula

If each face has just one stray piece left, move the stray piece on top to the far left corner and the stray piece on the front to the bottom right corner, then do Rw U Rw'. The other cases, such as two pieces sitting diagonally, are in the post how to solve the 4x4 centres.

Step 2: Pair the 12 edges

1. You start with (input)
3. After the formula

Find two edges with the same two colours. Put one in the edge between the front and the left, top half, and the other in the edge between the front and the right, bottom half, so the left-face sticker of the first matches the front-face sticker of the second. Turn U so the edge between the top and the right holds two edges that are not yet paired, then do:

Uw' R U R' Uw

The two pieces join into an edge pair, which gets stored in the edge between the top and the left. The two edges between the top and the right get split up to take their place, which is why they have to be an unpaired set. The centre blocks stay whole. Only turn the outer layers to bring edges into position, because outer layers never break a centre block or split an edge pair you've already made.

Is an edge in the wrong half, or is its sticker facing the wrong way? Move it to the edge between the front and the right, then flip that edge with R U R' F R' F' R. This algorithm flips the front-right edge in place and only shuffles the positions of the edge pairs on the top face, without splitting any of them.

1. You start with (input)
3. After the formula

The last two edge pairs have no unpaired set left to swap in. Put them in the front-left and front-right edges like in the picture, then do Uw' R U R' F R' F' R Uw: the algorithm swaps one edge piece between those two spots, and both get paired at once.

Step 3: Solve it like a 3x3

From here on, only turn the outer layers. Treat each centre block as one centre and each edge pair as one edge, then follow all seven steps of the 3x3 guide: White cross, Layer 1 corners, Layer 2 edges, Yellow cross, Yellow face, Put the yellow corners in place, Put the yellow edges in place. If everything goes smoothly to the end, you're done. If you run into a pattern that isn't in the guide, that's parity.

Step 4: Fix parity

1. You start with (input)
3. After the formula

Parity comes in two kinds, each with its own algorithm. At the Yellow cross step, if you count 1 or 3 layer 3 edge pairs with their yellow sticker on top, one pair is flipped: move a pair whose yellow sticker faces the front to the edge between the top and the front, then do 2R2 B2 U2 2L U2 2R' U2 2R U2 F2 2R F2 2L' B2 2R2 (top picture). At the last step, if the yellow corners are already in place but the layer 3 edge pairs don't match any pattern in the guide, do 2R2 U2 2R2 Uw2 2R2 Uw2 U2 (bottom picture) to swap the front and back edge pairs on the top face, then do the Put the yellow edges in place step again. According to J Perm, each kind shows up in about half of all solves (J Perm), so hitting parity doesn't mean you made a mistake. How to spot each case, with pictures, is in the separate post on 4x4 parity.

How fast can the best solvers do a 4x4?

According to WCA data as of 14 October 2026, the 4x4 world record is 15.18 seconds for a single and 18.56 seconds for an average. The Vietnamese records are 17.46 seconds and 20.02 seconds (WCA). The video below shows the 18.56 second average.

Want to go faster?

Once you can solve the 4x4 without looking at the guide, there are two ways to cut your time:

• Solve the 4x4 faster: tips for this same method, from building centres and pairing edges to parity.
• The Yau method for 4x4: a different solving order for speedcubers, pairing edges in a 3-2-3 pattern.

Sources

• Rubik's Revenge – Wikipedia
• How To Solve The 4x4 Rubik's Cube – J Perm
• 4x4x4 Rubik's Cube (Rubik's Revenge) – Ruwix
• WCA API – Records