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3D Skewb Puzzle Simulator

Play with the online Skewb on your computer or on your phone.

Drag a sticker to twist that corner's half of the cube. Drag next to the puzzle to rotate the whole cube.

The buttons scramble the puzzle or switch to full screen.

➤ Online Solver
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Error messages appear here when the puzzle is not colored properly.
3D preview: drag to rotate
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⟲ ◀ ▶ » 2.0 s/move Back to scramble
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Skewb Solver

Get the shortest solution for any scrambled Skewb. It is never more than 11 moves.

Paint the colors of your puzzle onto the net, press Solve and follow the moves.

You can use the palette, the turn buttons or a typed algorithm. Every letter twists half the cube around a corner.

➤ Tutorial

How to Solve the Skewb?

The beginner's method in four short steps: put the four yellow corners on the bottom, fix the last two top corners, then cycle the centres into place. Only four algorithms, and the longest is nine moves.

The Skewb looks like a cube but it does not turn like one. Instead of slicing layers, every move rotates half the puzzle around a corner, so the cut runs diagonally through the middle. That is where the name comes from: the cuts are skew. Tony Durham invented it, Uwe Mèffert put it on the market as the Pyraminx Cube, and Douglas Hofstadter renamed it the Skewb in Scientific American in 1982.

It has just 3,149,280 positions, a rounding error next to the 3x3, and every single one of them can be solved in 11 moves or fewer. That is the whole puzzle: eight corners, six centres, four axes.

The method below is our own, worked out from the puzzle's own geometry. Keep the excellent Ruwix Skewb guide open in another tab if you would like a second explanation of any step.

No Skewb at hand? Practice every step on our simulator, and let the solver rescue you if you get stuck.

R

How to Read the Moves

A Skewb move grabs half the cube and twists it a third of a turn around a corner. Four letters name the four corners you turn around: U, L, R and B. A plain letter turns that half clockwise as you look straight at its corner; an apostrophe (') turns it the other way. There are no double moves: two turns the same way equal one turn back.

Each diagram below is the Skewb unfolded flat, the same net you paint in the solver: the top face above, then left, front, right and back in a row, and the bottom face underneath. The highlighted stickers are the ones that travel.

U
around the up-back-left corner

R
around the down-right-back corner

L
around the down-left-front corner

B
around the down-left-back corner

Notice that every move drags four corners and three centres with it, half the puzzle at a time. That is why the Skewb feels so different from a layer-turning cube: nothing ever moves on its own.

💡

The Anchor Corner

Here is the fact that makes the whole method work, and almost no tutorial mentions it: the top-front-right corner never moves. Not with U, not with L, not with R, not with B. It is the one piece the four letters cannot reach, so the entire solve is built around it.

So before you start, turn the whole puzzle until that corner is the white-green-red one, with white up, green facing you and red on the right. That single choice fixes what "solved" means: white on top, yellow underneath, green in front, blue behind, orange left, red right.

The rest is seven more corners with three stickers each and six single-sticker centres. There are no edge pieces at all, which is exactly why the Skewb is an afternoon puzzle.

1

The Four Yellow Corners

Work on the bottom first. The goal is simple: get all four yellow corners onto the bottom face with yellow pointing down. Nothing else matters yet.

Ignore the centres. They are grey in the diagram on purpose. They are the very last thing you will solve, and worrying about them now only makes this step harder. Four yellow squares on the bottom is the entire target.

There is no algorithm here and you do not need one. Find a yellow corner, work out which corner-turn would carry it into a bottom slot with yellow facing down, and do it. Then the next one. Most scrambles fall in three to five moves; the worst case we measured was six.

One warning: every move is half the cube, so a turn that places one yellow corner will often kick another one out. Decide where the piece in your hand has to land before you turn, rather than turning and hoping.

2

Swap the Last Two Corners

Now something surprising happens. With the four yellow corners down, only two corners in the whole puzzle can still be wrong: the one at the top-front-left and the one at the top-back-right. The anchor corner and the top-back-left corner are always already correct, because the geometry of the Skewb guarantees it.

So look at just those two. Do they hold their own pieces, or each other's? Check them against the two corners that are already done: the front-left corner must carry the same orange its left-hand neighbour shows, and the same green as the anchor.

the two pieces are exchanged

If they are exchanged, trade them with:

B R B' R L' R'

Six moves. It swaps those two top corners, and it quietly swaps two bottom corners at the same time. That is why the yellow face survives intact. Afterwards both corners hold the piece that belongs there, even if it is still facing the wrong way.

3

Twist Them Upright

Both pieces are home now, so the only thing left to fix is which way they face. Look at the two white stickers on those corners. If they are already on top, skip straight to step 4.

white faces front and right

white faces left and back

Two cases, one algorithm each:

white to the front and right:
B U R B' L' R'

white to the left and back:
U L U' R' L' R

Six moves each, and they are mirror images of one another. Pick the wrong one and you break nothing. You simply land in the other case, so run the other algorithm and carry on.

All eight corners are home. The centres are still scrambled, and that is exactly as it should be.

4

Cycle the Centres

Six single-sticker centres are all that is left. Because every corner is already solved, you may now turn the whole puzzle any way you like between algorithms. So there are only two sequences to learn, and you aim them by re-holding the cube.

Which three? Do not grab three wrong centres at random. Choose them like this and the job stays short. Take a centre that is in the wrong place and call it the target. The colour that belongs on the target is sitting on some other face: that is your second. Now look at the colour currently on the target, and find the face it belongs to: that is your third. Cycling those three sends two colours home at once, and often all three.

(If the target and the second face are simply holding each other's colour, that trick gives you nothing new, so take any other wrong centre as the third.)

Those three faces always fall into one of two shapes.

front → right → back → front

front → up → right → front

Two of the three are on opposite faces. Turn the puzzle so they sit at the front, the right and the back, then run:

R L' B' U B U' R' U

All three meet at one corner. Turn the puzzle so they sit at the top, the front and the right, then run:

R U' L B R' B' R U R

Each one moves three centres around a ring and leaves every corner untouched. Run an algorithm twice to send the same three the other way round. Choose your three the way described above and you will never need more than three goes. We checked all 360 centre positions that can occur, and three is the maximum. Grab three wrong centres at random instead and it can take four.

That is the whole puzzle: white on top, yellow underneath, six matching faces.

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What Next?

Congratulations, you can solve the Skewb. Four algorithms, none longer than nine moves, and you will know them by heart after a dozen solves.

Now chase speed. Skewb is one of the fastest events in the sport. The world record average is 0.86 seconds (Sujan Feist, 2025), and with this method alone a sub-15 solve is well within reach. Practice against our timer, and let the solver show you the shortest route whenever you want to know how much you left on the table.

Ready for something else? Try the classic 3x3 cube, the pocket 2x2, the big 4x4, or the other corner-turning puzzle, the Pyraminx.

Ruwix Guide First Step
➤ Stopwatch
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Skewb Timer

Practice speedsolving the Skewb!

Hold the space bar or the clock until it turns green, then let go to start. Press again to stop.

It comes with official-style random-state scrambles and instant statistics.

➤ Back to top

Online Skewb Puzzle Simulator, Solver, Timer and Tutorial

Free online 3D Skewb simulator, shortest-solution solver, speedcube timer and a four-step tutorial for beginners.
The Skewb is cube-shaped but corner-turning. Every move twists half the puzzle around a diagonal, and there are no edge pieces at all.

The Skewb proves that a cube does not have to turn in layers. 🎲 Its cuts run diagonally through the middle. Grab a corner, twist it, and four corners and three centres come along. That is half the puzzle in one move. In your hands it feels nothing like a Rubik's Cube, even though it is the same shape on the shelf.

Tony Durham invented it in the early 1980s. Uwe Mèffert made it and sold it under the name Pyraminx Cube. Its real name came from Douglas Hofstadter. He called it the Skewb in his Scientific American column in July 1982, after those skew cuts. Mèffert liked the name and kept it, then used it again for the Skewb Diamond and the Skewb Ultimate. He is also the maker behind the twelve-sided Megaminx.

Twist the puzzle in the simulator

The simulator at the top of the page is a real 3D Skewb. Drag any sticker and the half of the cube around that corner turns with it. All eight corners work here, even though the official notation names only four of them. Drag next to the puzzle to orbit around it and check the hidden faces. The Scramble button mixes it up, and the full screen button gives you a bigger view. Nothing you do here can break it, so twist away.

Stuck? The solver always finds the shortest way

Paint the colours of your scrambled Skewb onto the flat net in the solver and press Solve. You can use the palette, the turn buttons, or type a scramble like R U' L B. What comes back is the shortest solution that exists. While the page sits idle, the solver walks the whole puzzle from the solved state. It stores how far away every position is, so it already knows the answer when you ask. If a colour pattern is impossible, it tells you exactly what looks wrong.

Race the clock

⏱️ Hold down the space bar until the clock turns green, then let go to start. Press again to stop. On a phone, hold the clock itself. That is the same hold-to-start ritual competition timers use. Every solve gets a fresh random-state scramble. The statistics panel keeps your best, your average, and your averages of 5 and 12, the numbers used at competitions. Your times stay saved in your browser.

Learn the whole solution in four steps

🎓 The tutorial below teaches a full beginner method in four short steps. You put the four yellow corners on the bottom, then swap the last two top corners if they are exchanged. After that you twist them upright and cycle the centres into place. Four algorithms cover every case, and none of them is longer than nine moves. Most people are solving on their own within an afternoon.

What makes the Skewb such a good first puzzle?

Here is how the Skewb compares to the cube it is shaped like:

Skewb3x3
Moving pieces1420
Possible positions3,149,280about 43 quintillion
Worst case11 moves20 moves
Turns around4 corners6 faces
Record average0.86 s
Sujan Feist, 2025		3.51 s
Yiheng Wang, 2026

World records as recorded by the WCA, checked August 2026. They move often, and the live list lives at worldcubeassociation.org.

OnlineCube.com also has the classic 3x3 cube, the pocket 2x2 cube, the big 4x4 cube and the pyramid-shaped Pyraminx. Each one has its own simulator, solver, timer and tutorial. If the Skewb clicked for you, the Pyraminx is the natural next stop. It is the other corner-turning puzzle, and just as quick to learn.