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Sausage's Hybrid Speed Solution

by Wayne Johnson

Step 2 - The Waterline Concept for the Bottom and Middle Layers

Now that we have the cross, let's turn the whole cube upsidedown so that the top face seen here, is on the bottom, and the white face is on top...

Like this. White is now our top face. Notice I have turned off most of the colours, except for the centre colours (so we know which face is which). Our objective in this section, is to solve both the bottom layer and the middle layer at the same time.

and I have added two neutral colours.

The grey represents the cubies on the top layer and indicates that these pieces are unimportant. They can be any colour, and it doesn't matter how they are mixed up.

The aqua colour, in the same way, indicates unimportant cubies in the bottom and middle layers. I call this, "The waterline".

The reason I call it this, is because, we are trying to solve the bottom and middle layers at the same time, and during this process, the bottom edges that contain a blue sticker are not allowed to go above the waterline. See how in this example, a single clockwise turn of the yellow face brings it just underneath the Waterline. This is acceptable. But to go above the Waterline is not acceptable. Remember BLUE - WATER - FISH DROWNING ABOVE WATER. I'm not trying to be restrictive; this becomes a helpful guide to not destroying the colours too much if you make a mistake.

When solving the first two layers, we work with an edge cube and a corner cube and join them together into a pair. This pair is then placed into a "hole" under the Waterline. But we need to always get these pieces onto the top layer before moving them together under the Waterline. When we do finally get a pair onto the top layer (or above the Waterline), they should look like one of the two following situations...

Situation No 1.

A corner cubie that has a blue sticker, must be matched up with the edge cubie that contains both of it's other colours. Eg. This BLUE, YELLOW & RED corner cubie, take away the blue, must be now match with the YELLOW & RED edge cubie.

Seeing we are only one move away from them being together, you can consider this situation to be complete and ready to go. If you get the pair in this situation, it is very good. The second favoured situation is this:

Situation No 2.

Both cubies are already together on the top layer. If you get your pair in this situation, it is also very good.

You'll see both of these situations happen four times in the following section.

Let's move onto Step 3.