Solved!
📖 How to use it, and how to solve it
Using the cube
- Turn a layer: press on a coloured sticker and drag along the cube in the direction you want that row to move. The layer that slides is the one your finger is on.
- Look around: press on the dark background (or the black gaps) and drag to spin the whole view. The ◀ ▶ ▲ ▼ buttons do the same, and Back shows the other side.
- Scramble mixes it with random turns (14 on the 2×2, 24 on the 3×3, 40 on the 4×4). The timer starts with your first turn and stops when every face is one colour. Your best time for each size is kept on this device.
- Undo takes back your last turn. Solve is not a clever solver: it replays every turn so far backwards, newest first, so it only works from a cube you scrambled here, and it does not count as a record. Reset gives you a fresh solved cube.
- Keys on a computer: u d l r f b turn a face clockwise, Shift + a letter turns it anticlockwise, arrow keys turn the view, z is undo and n is scramble.
- The moves counter counts every quarter turn as one move.
The letters (notation)
Hold the cube so you see its Front, Up (top) and Right faces. U D L R F B mean “turn that face a quarter turn clockwise as you look straight at it”. A tick, like R', means anticlockwise, and 2, like R2, means two quarter turns. On a 3×3 the middle slices are M (between L and R, turns like L), E (between U and D, turns like D) and S (between F and B, turns like F). On a 4×4 the buttons turn outer faces; use drag for the inner slices.
The goal
Every face one colour. On the 3×3 the six centre stickers never move, so they tell you which colour belongs on which face. (The 2×2 has no centres, so its colours can end up in any arrangement of the same six, which is why the game checks only that each face is one colour.) Standard colours: white up, yellow down, green front, blue back, red right, orange left.
A beginner method for the 3×3 (layer by layer)
Do these steps in order, always holding the cube so the face you are working on is as the step says. Every move below was checked in the game's own cube code to leave the finished layers alone.
- White cross. Make a white “+” on top. Each white edge must also match the colour of the side centre next to it. You can work this out by looking.
- White corners. Finish the top layer one corner at a time: put the white corner just below where it belongs (bottom layer, directly under its slot). Repeat R' D' R D until it drops in, white on top (1 to 5 times).
- Middle layer. Turn the cube upside down (yellow up). Find an edge on top with no yellow. Turn U until its front colour matches the front centre. If it must go right: U R U' R' U' F' U F. If it must go left: U' L' U L U F U' F'.
- Yellow cross. Use F R U R' U' F'. With a yellow dot only, do it once, then again as a hook; with an L-shape put the L in the back-left; with a line, hold it left to right. Repeat until there is a yellow +.
- Line up the yellow edges. Turn U until at least two yellow edges match their side centres. If two match next to each other, hold them at the back and right; if opposite, hold either way. Then do R U R' U R U2 R' U and look again. Repeat until all four match.
- Place the yellow corners. Find a corner that is already in the right place (its three colours match the three centres around it). Put it at front-right-top and do U R U' L' U R' U' L. Repeat until all four corners are in the right spots (they may still be twisted).
- Twist the corners. Hold an unsolved yellow corner at front-right-top. Do R' D' R D two or four times until its yellow faces up. Do not turn the whole cube; just turn U to bring the next unsolved corner into place and repeat. At the end the bottom two layers may look broken, but one last U turn fixes it.
The 2×2 is the same method without the middle layer and the edges. The 4×4 needs extra steps (join the centres and the edges first, then solve it like a 3×3), which are not covered here.
Not included
- A real solver. “Solve” only goes back through your own moves.
- Sizes above 4×4, and the exact scramble rules of competitions.
- This is a fan-made virtual puzzle. It is not connected with the makers of the Rubik's Cube.