How to use it
- Choose how to give us the colours: with the camera, face by face (one face at a time; the 3D cube shows you how to turn yours to move on to the next face) or with the unfolded cube (all six faces at once).
- Pick a colour and tap the stickers that have it on your cube, centres included. You can start with any face.
- When the 54 stickers are painted, press “Solve”.
- Follow the moves. Tap any move to see it on the 3D cube, or go through them one by one with the orange button.
With the camera
Press “Use the camera” and show each face of the cube to your phone or computer camera, in the order the 3D cube shows you. Fit the face in the grid and press the orange button. It works best in good light and without reflections; if your phone allows it, you can turn on the torch. When you finish, compare the colours with your cube and fix any that are wrong before solving. The image never leaves your device.
Shortest solution or our method?
The shortest solution undoes the scramble in 20 moves or fewer (every position of the cube can be solved in 20 moves or fewer). It is the best option if you only want to get your cube back to its original state, but it is impossible to remember: each position has its own solution.
The solution with our method is longer, about 130 moves, but it follows the 7 steps of our beginner's solution case by case: for each stage it tells you the step and the case you have, how to hold the cube and which moves to make. Each stage links to its case, so you can learn the method while you solve your cube. After a few times, you will not need the solver.
How to read the moves
Each drawing shows the layer that turns in light blue and the direction with an orange arrow. Below it is the move in the usual notation: R (right), L (left), U (up), D (down), F (front) and B (back) turn that face clockwise, as if you were looking at it; with an apostrophe (R'), anticlockwise; with a 2 (R2), twice. In our method, sometimes you also have to turn the whole cube: the solver tells you which colour goes on top and which in front. The same drawings are used on the patterns page.
My cube has other colours
Not all cubes have the same colours in the same places. Most have white opposite yellow, green opposite blue and red opposite orange, but in the Japanese scheme, for example, white is opposite blue. It does not matter: as you paint the centres too, the solver works with any combination. If one of your colours is different (purple instead of orange, for example), press “My cube has other colours” and change its shade so that the drawings look like your cube.
It says my cube cannot be solved
First check the colours: a single wrong sticker is enough. The solver tells you if a colour appears more or fewer than 9 times and marks in red the pieces with colour combinations that do not exist. If everything is right and it still cannot be solved, someone has twisted a corner, flipped an edge or taken the cube apart and put it back together wrongly: see how to fix an unsolvable cube.
Your colours are only saved in your browser and the camera image never leaves your device: nothing is sent anywhere.