Most persons who encounter Rubik's cube for the first time find it relatively easy to arrange one face of the cube, so I take a cube with one layer arranged as the starting point for the five "recipes" needed to complete the cube. However, for completeness, and to help beginners get started, here are a few tips and tricks for the first two steps. The notation is explained on the main Rubik page.

Step 1 is to position and orient the edge "subcubes" of the top layer. If we choose the face with a white central square to be the top layer, the objective is to establish a "white cross" on top, where the edge subcubes match the colors of the adjacent faces:

This is achieved by using the top or bottom layer to transport the white edge subcubes to the left, right, front or back face where they belong. The only complication that can arise is when the edge subcube is oriented in the opposite direction to what is desired. Let us for example assume that in the illustration the red/white subcube at the top of the front side would be inverted, so that it would be white on the front side, and red on the top side. In that case, the sequence FU^-1RU would solve the problem.

Step 2 is to position and orient the corner "subcubes" of the top layer:

This is achieved by bringing each corner subcube to be positioned to the corner in the lower right corner of the front face directly below its final destination in the upper right corner of the front face. Three cases can arise:

1. The white face of the corner subcube appears at the lower right of the front side. The sequence FDF^-1 will bring it to its correct position and orientation in the top layer.
2. The white face of the corner subcube appears at the lower left of the right side. The sequence R^-1D^-1R will bring it to its correct position and orientation in the top layer.
3. The white face of the corner subcube appears in the bottom side. The sequence R^-1D²RD will bring us back to case 2.

If the subcube is already in the right position but oriented wrongly, it has to be moved to the bottom layer through an F or R^-1 move, moved out of the way through a D or D^-1 move, the top layer restored through F^-1 or R, respectively, and the subcube moved under its final position through D^-1 or D, respectively. This brings us to one of the cases above.