he is now disappointed whenever he solves it in less than 30 seconds.

Sounds like it’s time to upgrade him to a professor cube.

I learned how to solve a regular cube but it still takes me a long time. Using the cross method.

It’s a matter of memorizing a few algorithms, I did it when I wasn’t much older than him. It’s pretty easy to solve the first two layers unaided, but you’re likely to get into the weeds on the last layer without algorithms.

I learned back in high school from a friend out of boredom. Now it’s just a fidget thing. I don’t really go for speed. I just solve it if I’m bored

I learned how to solve them from a book when they first came out in the late 70s. I can still remember enough of the moves to get two layers, but not the third.

Took me a weekend watching youtube back in highschool. Its not SUPER hard to get it consistent. Look for the pattern, do the right moves.

To do it faster you need to learn even more patterns, which i have not learnt. Like my best time is 59 seconds. No idea how to do your sons 30 second time.

Its just memorization at a certain point

Speedcubing is a fun hobby. I don’t know anyone who has solved a cube fully without instructions.

Well, you are either not really interested in it or can’t focus for 30 minutes needed to understand how it’s done.

There are only a few minimum algorithms you need to memorize to solve one. The real fun is learning more so you can solve it more efficiently/faster.

I learned as an adult by reading a website with instructions and practicing until I could remember and understand what’s going on.

My favourite to solve is a “mirror cube”. It has blocks of the same colour, but they have unequal lenghts of sides, and I’ve learned to solve it without looking.

You can solve 2 layers with logic. The 3rd requires patterns. You can discover patterns on your own by doing repeated motions until the cube returns to its original state. I came across a pattern that swapped colors on one side. That got me all the way to everything but 2 corners that needed to be rotated. On my own, I never discovered the pattern that rotated corners.

Check out Jperm on YouTube. He’s got a 10 minute video that I used to memorize the basic algorithm.

I took the stickers off and put them back on in order when I was a kid lol

I learnt from instructions in a booklet I found at grandma’s house when I was in my early teens. I have since forgotten how to do the last layer.

I went to cubeskills.com, watched their videos, and learned “the beginner method.”

I can solve now in under a minute, and that’s good enough for me.

So, “solving” a Rubik’s is just a matter of memorizing a set of algorithms (move patterns). That’s it.

Now, figuring out how to solve a Rubik’s cube from scratch, by determining what those move algorithms are through months of trial-and-error, that would be quite the feat. That’s what you attempted to do. I did not do that, nor did most people.

Anyway, if you haven’t already, get your kid a nice Gan cube (the one with magnets). Well worth the money. If he sticks with it, he might hit sub-15 or sub-10.