A 3D puzzle cube in 2×2 or 3×3. Drag a sticker to turn a layer, drag the background to turn the cube, and bring every face back to one colour.
What is Twisty Cube?
Twisty Cube is a 3D puzzle cube you play in the browser: each face of the cube is made of coloured stickers, you turn its layers to scramble the colours, and the puzzle is solved when every face shows a single colour again. You can play the classic 3×3 cube or the smaller 2×2.
The game gives you a real cube to turn with your finger, the mouse or the keyboard, plus a move counter, a timer and a record of your best time for each size. It does not solve the cube for you, so the satisfaction of a solved cube is all yours.
How to play the puzzle cube
Pick a size, 2×2 or 3×3, then press Scramble. The cube is mixed at once with a series of random turns. To turn a layer, drag across a sticker in the direction you want that layer to move. On the 3×3 this includes the middle layers. To look at the other faces, drag the empty space around the cube, or right-drag (Ctrl-drag also works) to turn the whole cube.
With a keyboard, the letters F, B, U, D, L and R turn the front, back, up, down, left and right faces a quarter turn clockwise, as seen when looking at that face. Hold Shift to turn the other way. The arrow keys turn the whole cube, and Z undoes the last turn.
The timer starts with your first turn after a scramble, and every quarter turn counts as one move. Undo takes back turns one at a time, but each undo also counts as a move. Reset returns the cube to the solved state without timing anything. When every face is one colour, the game shows your moves and time and saves your best time for that size.
How to solve a 3×3 cube: a beginner's method
The beginner's method solves the cube layer by layer. In the letters below, a letter alone means a clockwise quarter turn of that face, and a letter with an apostrophe means a counter-clockwise turn, which in our game is Shift plus that letter. So you can type the sequences directly.
1. White cross. The six centre stickers of a 3×3 keep their positions relative to one another, which fixes the colour of every face. Bring the four edge pieces that have white to the white centre, each with its second colour matching the centre of the side face next to it.
2. White corners. Hold the cube with the white face on top. Find a white corner in the bottom layer and turn the bottom layer until the corner sits directly under the spot where it belongs, at the front right. Repeat R' D' R D until the corner is in place with white facing up. Do the same for the other three corners.
3. Middle layer. Turn the whole cube over so white is on the bottom. Find an edge in the top layer that has no yellow, and turn the top layer until its front colour matches the front centre. If it belongs on the right, do U R U' R' U' F' U F. If it belongs on the left, do U' L' U L U F U' F'.
4. Yellow cross. With yellow on top, F R U R' U' F' turns a yellow dot into an L shape, an L into a line, and a line into a cross. Hold the L in the back left corner and the line from left to right before you start.
5. Last layer. Short sequences then put the yellow edges and corners in their places. To finish, twist each corner so yellow faces up: hold the cube with an unfinished corner at the front right of the top layer and repeat R' D' R D until yellow is on top. Turn only the top layer to bring the next unfinished corner to the same spot, and repeat. The lower layers look scrambled during this step and come back when the last corner is done.
Tips for the 2×2 and for faster solves
The 2×2 has only corner pieces and no centres, so no sticker tells you the colour of a face in advance. Solve one face by placing its four corners so their side colours match each other, then use the corner steps of the 3×3 method to finish the last layer. It is a good way to learn the corner sequences before you try the 3×3.
To get faster, learn to look ahead: while one piece is going into place, find the next one. Keep the cube in the same position as much as you can, since turning the whole cube costs time. Watch your move count as well as your time; beginners' solves often take well over 100 moves, and lowering that number speeds up every solve.
A short history of the puzzle cube
The 3×3 puzzle cube was invented in 1974 by Ernő Rubik, a Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture, and was sold worldwide from 1980. It became one of the best-selling toys of all time, and the first world championship for fast solving was held in Budapest in 1982.
The numbers behind it are large. A 3×3 cube has about 43 quintillion possible positions, while a 2×2 has 3,674,160. In 2010 a team using computer searches proved that any 3×3 position can be solved in 20 moves or fewer when a half turn counts as one move. Our game counts quarter turns, so its move counter will show a half turn as two moves.
Play Twisty Cube free on Hevagames
Twisty Cube runs in the browser on phones, tablets and computers, with no download. On a touch screen one finger turns layers and dragging the background turns the cube. On a computer you can use the mouse, the keyboard or both. If your device asks for reduced motion, the turns are shown without animation.
The state of your cube, with its move count and time, stays in your browser, so you can close the page and continue later. The game also keeps your best time for each size and counts how many cubes you have solved. It follows the site's light or dark theme, and its code is free software under the GPL-3.0 license, built on the open-source twisty-polyhedra project by Aditya.
How to play
- 1Choose 2×2 or 3×3 and press Scramble.
- 2Drag across a sticker to turn the layer it belongs to.
- 3Drag the empty space around the cube to turn the whole cube and see the other faces.
- 4The puzzle is solved when each face shows a single colour. Moves and time are counted from your first turn.
Controls
Tips
- Start with the 2×2: it has no centre pieces, only corners.
- On the 3×3 the centre stickers never move relative to each other, so they tell you each face's colour.
- A common beginner method solves one face, then the middle layer, then the last face.