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Home > Blogs & Articles > Parents Portal > Buying Speedcubes
Buying Speedcubes
Advice from a speedcube shop when buying cubes for your children
Buying Cubes
Attending Competitions
Cubing Community
Common Issues
UK Cubing Shops
When buying online you have to be careful, even more so when it comes to speedcubes. KewbzUK are the go to speedcube shop in the UK. There are quite a few websites that use a .co.uk domain but DO NOT ship from the UK.
These websites aren't always easy to spot, they usually use poor images and have a lot of broken English throughout the pages. One example of a Chinese store pretending to be from the UK is 'speedcubestore.co.uk'.
Starter Cubes
There is alot to think about when buying the right speedcube for your kids. If they are a beginner and just looking to get into the sport then you can't go wrong with a magnetic budget cube. Most cubers (at competitions) have a main event, and most of the time, it's 3x3.
Another great choce for beginner cubers would be a Skewb or Pyraminx:
Cubing Jargon - What it all means
Cubes these days are magnetic (well most of the good ones). But there are a few different types of magnetic cubes.
- Magnetic - Just standard magnets between the edge pieces and the corner pieces. Uses a spring around a screw to give the elasticity.
- Maglev - Instead of using a spring as the method above does, Maglev uses 2 repelling magnets to create the springy effect. Maglev cubes are often fast and can be uncontrolable, this doesn't mean don't buy it, but you may need some lube to slow it down slightly.
- Ballcore - Most ballcore cubes are also maglev - Ballcore basically means there are more magnets in the cube that go from the base of the corner to the core. This will create a satisfying and noticable magnetic click when the layers are aligned.
- Algorithm - A sequence of moves F/R/U/L/B/D
- Case - A pattern on the cube where you know the algorithm to solve it
- CFOP - An extremely popular method for solving the 3x3 Rubik's cube. CROSS/F2L/OLL/PLL
- Corner Piece - The piece at the corner of the puzzle with 3 colours on it
- Cross - Solving the first 4 edge pieces around a given center
- Cube - The shorthand name for all twisty puzzles even if they are not an actual 'cube' shape
- DNF - Did Not Finish
- DNS - Did Not Solve
- Edge Piece - Sandwhiched between the corners, on standard 2x2-7x7 cubes this will only have 2 colours on it.
- F2L - First 2 Layers - The first two layers of the cube. Usually cubers will
- Inspection - In competition, you get up to 15 seconds to inspect the cube before you start your solve.
- Lube - Yep, plastic puzzles need lubrication to keep them maintained, there are MANY lubes on the market that all do different things
- OLL - Orientate Last Layer - When you've solved F2L you need to bring all of the last layer piece to the top face
- PLL - Permute Last Layer - After OLL you move the top layer pieces into their correct place (solving the cube)
- Scramble - Mixing up the puzzle ready to solve
- TPS - Turns per second, how many turns the cuber is making every second
- UKCA - UK Cubing Association (the UK part of the WCA)
- WCA - World Cubing Association, the governing body for speedcubing
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.