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Three steps and three algorithms. A 2×2 is a normal cube with only its corners, so this is the first-timer’s method with everything about edges taken away — most people have it in under an hour.
Each rule on this page has been followed, exactly as written, from every position the top of the cube can be in. Step 2 never needs more than three goes, and step 3 always needs just one.
Hold the cube with white on the bottom and yellow on top, and keep it that way.
There are no centres on a 2×2, so nothing tells you which side is which colour. The corners decide it: once one white corner is down, the colours beside it say where its neighbours go.
R means turn the right side clockwise, R’ anticlockwise and R2 twice. U is the top and F the front. Try every move on a cube.
All four white stickers on the bottom face, and the two colours on each side of the bottom row matching.
Hold white on the bottom. A 2×2 has no centres to tell you which colour goes where, so the rule is simpler: the four white corners go on the bottom, and the side colours of neighbouring corners must match.
Build it one corner at a time. Find a white corner in the top layer, turn the top until it sits above a place where it fits next to the corners already done, then repeat the trigger until it drops in white-side-down.
The first corner can go anywhere. Every corner after it has only one right place.
Repeat until the corner above the front-right drops in with white on the bottom. One, three or five goes.
This is the 3×3 trigger, used exactly the same way. It briefly lifts a bottom corner out — that is how the new one gets in — so it makes no promise about the rest of the layer.
The whole top face yellow. The sides can still be mixed up.
Count the yellow stickers on top. If exactly one corner is yellow on top, turn the top so it is at the front-left, and do the algorithm.
If none or two are yellow on top, turn the top until the front-left corner has a yellow sticker facing left, and do the algorithm.
Then look again and repeat. It never takes more than three.
Every time, with the top turned as described above.
This will not touch the layer you have already built. Checked against the puzzle, not promised.
A solved cube.
Look at the sides of the top layer. A side where both top corners show the same colour is called headlights.
If you have headlights, turn the top so they are on the left, and do the first algorithm. If no side has them, do the second.
Then turn the top until everything lines up. One algorithm is always enough.
Headlights on one side: hold them on the left.
No side has headlights.
This will not touch the layer you have already built. Checked against the puzzle, not promised.
You already know most of the 3×3. Its first layer, its yellow corners and its last corner swap are these same three ideas; what it adds are the edges.