Rubik's Cube notation explained: R, U, F, primes, wide moves, slices and rotations

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Every tutorial, algorithm list and scramble writes moves in the same shorthand. It looks like a code at first, but it takes ten minutes to learn, and after that you can follow any guide or video without watching someone's hands.

The six face turns

Each letter is a quarter turn of one face, clockwise as if you were looking directly at that face:

R: right face
L: left face
U: up (top) face
D: down (bottom) face
F: front face, the one facing you
B: back face

The tricky part is that "clockwise" depends on which face you are looking at. R moves the front stickers on the right side upwards. L, seen from its own side, moves the front stickers on the left side downwards. U moves the front row to the left. D moves the front row to the right. B is the hardest to picture: imagine walking round the cube and turning the back face clockwise from behind.

Primes and doubles

R' (said "R prime"): the anticlockwise version, a quarter turn the other way.
R2: a half turn. Direction does not matter for the result, so turn whichever way is comfortable. You will sometimes see R2' written by people describing how they turn it with their fingers.

A sequence such as R U R' U' is read left to right: right face up, top face left, right face down, top face right.

Wide moves

A wide move turns the face and the middle layer next to it together, two layers at once. It is written two ways:

Rw or lower-case r: the right face plus the middle slice, in the same direction as R.
Likewise Lw (l), Uw (u), Dw (d), Fw (f) and Bw (b).

On big cubes you will see numbers in front, such as 3Rw, meaning the outer three layers on the right.

Slice moves

These turn only a middle layer:

M (middle): the layer between L and R, turned in the same direction as L.
E (equator): the layer between U and D, turned in the same direction as D.
S (standing): the layer between F and B, turned in the same direction as F.

M' and M2 work as you would expect. M moves are common in some advanced methods and in the last steps of many solves.

Whole-cube rotations

These turn the entire cube in your hands and do not change the puzzle's state:

x: rotate the whole cube in the direction of R.
y: rotate the whole cube in the direction of U.
z: rotate the whole cube in the direction of F.

x', y2 and so on follow the same rules. Older guides sometimes write rotations in capitals or in brackets, such as [r] or [u], so check the key if a guide looks unfamiliar.

Brackets and triggers

Algorithms are often split with brackets, such as (R U R' U') (R' F R F'). The brackets do not change anything; they mark chunks that are executed as one quick motion. Short chunks you see again and again get nicknames. R U R' U' is so common that cubers often call it the "sexy move", and R' F R F' is called the "sledgehammer".

Reading a scramble

Official scrambles use only face turns, primes and doubles, applied from a fixed orientation. Competition scrambles are held with white on top and green at the front. Follow them exactly; one wrong turn gives a different scramble, which matters if you are comparing times with someone else.

How to practise it

Take a solved cube and do R, then R' to undo it. Repeat for every face.
Do R U R' U' six times on a solved cube. It returns to solved, which is a good check that you are reading it correctly.
Try a short algorithm from a guide, then undo it by reading it backwards with every prime flipped.

Which move still trips you up, B or the slices? Ask in the comments, or share the trick that made notation stick for you.