Summary

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The Nautilus method is developed by James Straughan (Athefre) in coordination with several others. Liam Highducheck, Vincent Trang, Ryan Hudgens, and mrmangohands have all contributed step ideas, algorithms, and general thoughts that have refined Nautilus. Eric Xu has been pivotal in ensuring that Nautilus has high quality images, with his development of an image generator. Join my Discord server above to become part of the community.

Additional techniques and ideas are included on this page. These include intuitive techniques for the first two layers that make more use of the shape concept of Nautilus and the LXS step, other first two layers steps, and last layer method ideas.

When solving the last two centers, the ending will almost always be R U R' or R U' R'. At that point, the same three move algorithms can be used to position the corner and a purple triangle ready to be solved using the final R U R' or R U' R'. Once those pieces are in position, perform the initial R move to build the group of last slot pieces. Then solve the bottom triangle and add the pair and center block to the right side layer.

If the bottom layer triangle is already solved at the start, or was intentionally solved with the front center's left half, moves such as BR' F' U' F U BR cycle the U layer pieces without affecting the bottom layer triangle. F or BR' can be used to place an unsolved triple at the DR position to allow for free working of other pieces using the three move algorithms.

There isn't a massive number of algorithms for solving the last slot in a single step. At first it may seem to be complicated. But consider that the three pieces of the front half center can only be in a limited number of positions on the upper or front face and the two front triangles can be solved into either position. The corner also has a limited number of positions - it can be in either the upper layer or in its position solved or flipped. The right side triangle can be any of the three right side triangles and one of the right side triangles can always be found within a subset of positions rather than the eight total that exist.

This means that Nautilus could evolve to become a method that reaches F2L-Last Slot then a two step algorithm based finish of Last Slot then Last Layer.

It may be advantageous to orient the last layer corners during a final step of the F2L. The last triple is a lot of cases, which would increase if adding in LL corner orientation. However, if the bottom triangle can be solved with the centers of Step 2, a ZBLS equivalent could be used. The last F2L corner and the triangle above it can be solved while orienting the LL corners.

Another option would be to combine corner orientation with the advanced last slot described in the previous section. The final moves to solve the advanced LS will typically be R U R' or R U' R'. Setting up to this point first may be a good stepping stone because the LL corners can be easily oriented before or while solving the final insert of R U R' or R U' R'.

The last layer state can be reached by also using the steps of the Nautilus related method APB. In this style the steps are:

1. FB

2. Stripe - Solve the slice of the bottom two layers between the BL and R layers. This leaves the U and R layers unsolved. The bottom layer center piece can be either solved during this step or left out.

3. Solve the remainder of the first two layers. If following the APB steps exactly, the other half of the BR center is filled in then the five pieces of the last slot are solved. If the bottom layer center was left out during the second step, it can be easily solved during this step.

4. Last layer.

Outside of 1LLL and the last layer methods presented above, below are some other interesting ideas:

1. Orient the last layer corners then use PLL.

2. Form the three triples on the last layer in any orientation then solve the triples.

3. Form four triples at the last triple step then solve the four triples.

4. Orient the last layer corners while solving the last six triangles relative to the corners. This forms three triples that can then be permuted using one of two algorithms. This idea was proposed by Vincent Trang.

5. Leave out the bottom right corner and solve all triangles. Then solve the final four corners in a single step.

6. Solve one triple in one alg then solve the other two corners and four triangles of the last layer in one alg. The second alg set would likely be useful to know even if not always doing LL this way.

7. Solve the three corners then the last six triangles.

8. Solve two triangles of the last layer then solve the remaining pieces.