Master Skewb Tutorial

Hee's a little fella I just recently got to know, whom I like to call the Master Skewb. Shown with it, from left, are the plain old Skewb and, for reasons we'll get to a bit later, the Super Ivy Cube and the Rex Cube.

Everyone else calls it the Master Skewb Cube. I think that sounds dumb. Although not all Skewb puzzles are cube-shaped (let's recall the Skewb Diamond and the Skewb Ultimate, for example), the word "cube" is kind of baked into "Skewb," and after all, the Master Skewb is visibly related to the original Skewb in much the same way the Master Pyraminx is related to the Pyraminx: it's cut into one more layer of pieces per side. Sorta.

By that "sorta" hangs a tale. See, in my previous Skewb puzzle tutorials, I've suggested a characteristic that seems to unify puzzles that fly under the Skewb flag: Every turn actually twists one-half of the puzzle around a central axis. But as the next series of photos will illustrate, that isn't the case with the Master Skewb Cube. Each turn, rather, moves about one-third of three adjacent sides. So, it has more in common with such corner-turning cube puzzles as the Super Ivy and Rex cubes, as well as the Redi, Ivy and Dino cubes. Also, while there's definitely a similarity in how all these puzzles solve (including the Skewb), the Master Skewb's solution most closely resembles that of the (essentially identical) Super Ivy and Rex cubes. It's not quite the same. But pretty much a next-level-up version of them, with a couple of added wrinkles due to those itty-bitty, tippy corner pieces.

Let's name the parts. Yes, we'll call those tiny, three-colored pieces at the vertices the corners; eight of them. Then let's call the 12 two-colored pieces, forming triangles along the edges of each side, (duh) edges. The diagonally oriented square in the center of each side is, obviously, a center. And although they're also square-shaped, let's call the four squares surrounding each center petals, in recognition that the role they play is identical to that of the petals on the Super Ivy and Rex cubes. Now that that's settled, we can look at how this sucker moves.

Here are what the clockwise moves look like around each vertex. First, starting with white "up," green at "front," red at "right" and the front-right edge facing forward, UR:

Then UL:

F:

U:

R:

L:

D:

And, shot from above, B:

This notation only really matters for scrambling purposes. Which makes it extra vexing that there isn't a scrambler for the Master Skewb. I've had to make do, as so often before, with the Redi Cube scrambler at scramble.cubing.net. Here's the scramble pattern I used for the example solve that follows.

And here's how that scramble pattern looked, executed on the Master Skewb. You can only tell whether it's correct by the edges.

Whether that's a sufficiently fair and random scramble for this puzzle is a matter of conjecture. If in doubt, I'd suggest adding a Skewb scramble on top of the Redi Cube one. But in this instance, I didn't and that didn't take anything away from the challenge of solving it.

STEP 1: SOLVE WHITE EDGES – or whatever color you choose to start with. In my circles, i.e. Beginners, white is typically where you start and, though it only vaguely applies in this case, yellow becomes the last layer. Here I've arbitrarily decided to build the white side around this green-white edge, to the front right of top. Recalling that the order of side colors going counterclockwise around the white side should be B-O-G-R (blue, orange, green, red), that other white edge at back right should be white-red; but it's not. It happens to be white-orange.

I found this white-red edge and moved it into position on the edge adjacent to where it belongs (here, orange-white is at back left and green-white is at back right); then I dial around the vertex between them to bring white-red into place.

Now I've put orange-white on the side edge adjacent to the top edge where it belongs, with white-green at back right. Turning around the top front vertex, the result is orange-white in its proper place.

That just leaves the edge where white-blue belongs. Trouble is, that edge is the blue one on the bottom layer at right. To bring it to the top and place it on the white side, you're going to have to move one of those edges out of the way.

Here, I've dialed red-white over to the top right edge. Then I bring blue-white up from the bottom to the front edge; and finally, when I twist red-white back into its previous position, it brings blue to the top with it.

Basically, this whole step is pretty much on you. Be intuitive. Be creative. Apply strategies you've learned for other puzzles, such as the Super Ivy and Rex cubes, the original Skewb, etc. Once you have the algorithms for Steps 3ff. down pat, this and Step 2 will be the hardest part of the puzzle; but hopefully, not too awfully hard.

STEP TWO: SOLVE WHITE CORNERS. If the YouTuber whose tutorial got me started on solving this puzzle is to be believed, you can't solve the Master Skewb without completing this step – and that means both orienting (bringing to the correct layer) and permuting (putting them at the correct corners) all four of them. Here you see my starting state, with one white corner correctly oriented but at the wrong corner and the other three, um, elsewhere.

Here's the white-orange-green corner on the bottom layer, perfectly positioned to bring to the top – below and to the right of the white-green edge (at top left) and with the white side facing the opposite side. A counterclockwise twist around the corner pointing into my palm will bring it up into the top left corner, with its side colors correctly lined up.

Let's look again at that blue-orange-white corner, incorrectly placed where green-red-white should be. Meanwhile, green-red-white is on the bottom layer, at right – exactly where you want it, but oriented the wrong way. You need the white facing back right to bring it home. Otherwise, behold what happens when you try to dial it in:

Put that corner back where it was before and take another look at it. If you twist around it as the focal point of the turn, you can set it up to dial into place with all three sides the right way around.

In this case, we find the white-orange-blue corner on the bottom layer, toward back right, but again, twisted the wrong way around. To dial around that corner means pulling the white-orange-green corner (at back-right of top) out of place. No worries; do the rotation, dial white-blue-orange into place, then dial white-orange-green back up from its temporary displacement. Et voila!

STEP 3. SOLVE MIDDLE-LAYER EDGES. The objective is for the edges going around the waist of the cube to match the colors of the top-layer edges on each side. Notice, for example, how the the blue-red edge at bottom left belongs at the front, currently occupied by orange-blue.

To move that bottom edge to front-and-center, traveling 90 degrees, do this (swapping directions depending on whether your edge is traveling clockwise or counterclockwise): (1) Dial the bottom edge up and out of the way, i.e. in the opposite direction to where it belongs.

(2) Then dial the target edge (like, where you want to insert red-blue) down to where red-blue was a moment ago.

(3) Next, bring the hero piece (red-blue) back from out of the way.

(4) Finally, dial it up into the targeted position, i.e. the edge between the red and blue sides.

The symmetry of this pattern – making turns from alternate directions and then undoing them in the same order – ensures that those all-important white corners stay where they belong, even if (don't worry) they end up turned the wrong way around. You can fix that later, but (my YouTuber informant tells me) if you break that symmetry and let those corners stray from their proper locations, there's no saving your solve.

Next, the green-orange edge at front, below, belongs at right; i.e. on the parallel edge across the orange side from where we find it.

To make this 180-degree edge swap, (1) dial the target edge to the bottom between the two side edges in question;

(2) dial the hero edge (green-orange) down into the same bottom-layer slot; (3) turn orange-green up into the target edge;

and (4) dial that bottom edge back up to where the hero piece started, preserving the symmetry of the move and thereby restoring that white corner to the top layer.

Result:

Now we have, at front, the edge where (according to the top-layer edges) a green-red edge should be; but it's at the bottom right. Again, your move is to (1) put the green-red edge out of the way; (2) bring the target edge down to where green-red just was; (3) bring green-red back into that slot; and (4) dial it into its correct position. A "right-up, left-down, right-down, left-up" symmetry, if that helps.

Finally, there remains the edge between the orange and blue sides. I apologize for the angle of this shot, where the problem edge appears to be at the left of top. I guess I was trying to show how far away from its home that blue-orange edge piece is – at what looks like the right but should probably be regarded as the bottom layer, to the right of the back corner.

That's a ways to go, right? But you can do it. First, with the hero edge (orange-blue) at bottom right, dial the target edge down to the bottom left.

Second, dial orange blue "up" (this was a clockwise move) into that bottom-left slot.

Third dial blue-orange up into its desired position:

And fourth, give that bottom right corner a "down" twist to preserve the symmetry and restore the white corners on top.

And behold, the side edges are solved!

STEP 4: SOLVE YELLOW EDGES. By now, the only unsolved edges are those surrounding what should be the yellow side, opposite white. With yellow as the "last" and therefore "top" layer (but really, only for this step), the object is to put these yellow edges in the correct slots, so their non-yellow sides match the other edges going all the way around. In this instance, all four edges are out of whack, with yellow facing the wrong way and the side colors rotated 90 degrees.

Just like the edge algorithm for the Super Ivy and Rex cubes, you choose a side to put at front – this is the one algorithm that you do while facing a side, not an edge – and, alternating between turns around the top back right and top back left vertices, do an "up-up-down-down" pattern:

The result, viewed from both sides, is that the blue-yellow edge found its way to the correct spot; that leaves three edges out of place.

Now, keeping the solved (blue-yellow) edge at front, repeat the same "up-up-down-down" algorithm, alternating between right and left at the back of the cube.

Check the results; you may (and I did) have to repeat this step before all three remaining edges cycle into place.

Alternately, you could anticipate which direction they need to cycle and start the pattern on the left, if necessary. But out of force of habit, I always start this algorithm on the right, even if it means extra steps.

STEP 5: SOLVE CENTERS. This is exactly the same as the center algorithm for Super Ivy and Rex: you rotate the top, right and left centers around a shared vertex by doing "up-up-down-down" times 2 – starting on the right to cycle them clockwise, and on the left to cycle them counterclockwise. Like, let's start with these three sides; a clockwise cycle will bring the red and blue centers home. (Forgive me for not showing all those ups and downs.)

Strategically, you want to solve three adjacent sides around one vertex, rather than in a row, because cleaning up the centers with a three-cycle algorithm can be tricky when the last two unsolved centers are on opposite sides of the cube. You can do it, but only by breaking something you've already solved, which is never ideal. So, recalling that yellow was adjacent to the blue and red sides whose centers we just solved, let's do a counterclockwise cycle between these three sides, solving the yellow center.

Now that those three centers are solved, you only need to do the center algorithm one more time to clean up the last three sides – a clockwise cycle this time.

STEP 6: SOLVE THE PETALS. Again, this works exactly like it does on the Super Ivy and Rex cubes. For instance, to swap the blue petal in the northeast quadrant of the white side for the white petal in the northwest quadrant of the blue side ...

(1) Dial that blue-on-white petal up on top to form a bar with the white-on-blue one.

(2) Rotate the cube so this bar is oriented northwest-to-southeast on the right side. Note that the petal-swap algorithm will also swap the petals running southwest-to-northeast on the left side; but that's nothing to be concerned about. Usually.

(3) Do the algorithm right-up, left-up, right-down, left-down, "w," left-up, right-up, left-down, right down, where "w" is what I call a cube rotation in which you keep the same vertex facing you but rotate the three adjacent sides 1/3-turn clockwise. I don't show these steps at this point, only the result, but don't worry; I'll depict it in a bit. Anyway, here's the immediate result of the algorithm; then you must undo the setup move that put the two pieces opposite each other, thus healing the sides you temporarily broke.

Now, in more detail: Here's a green petal (at the northeast of right) that I want to swap for an orange petal (at the northwest of top).

Set-up move: twisting around the vertex at top right, put the green-on-orange petal at the opposite end of the same bar as the orange-on-blue petal.

Rotate the cube to put this bar at right, running NW to SE. Observe that the bar at left, SW to NE, already has two blue petals, so swapping them won't change anything.

Now, starting on the right and alternating right to left, do an "up-up-down-down":

Then, carefully, give the whole cube a "w" turn:

Then start from the left for another "up-up-down-down":

And finally, undo your setup move, restoring the orange side (to say nothing of white and blue):

I complete the white side (saving corners) with the same procedure, depicted briefly below (starting state, setup move and final result):

Now that I have one side solved, my next goal will be to solve two adjacent sides that share a common vertex, for similar reasons as with the center cycles: getting petals onto an adjacent side is much simpler than chasing it from the opposite side of the cube. So, here's an opportunity to swap a green-on-orange petal (at NW of right) for an orange-on-green one (at NE of top):

Setup move and rotating the cube into position (again, noting that swapping the two yellow petals on the red side won't hurt anything):

And then the (right) up-up-down-down-w-(left) up-up-down-down moves, here showing only the w move (before and after) and the end result:

And finally, undoing the setup move:

Here's an opportunity to swap a green-on-blue petal (NE of right) with a blue-on-yellow (NW of top), with setup move & end result. Note that with the already-solved orange side at left, there's no risk of unintended (left) side effects:

Turning the cube around, an opportunity to finish the blue side becomes apparent, with the blue-on-yellow petal at right in position vs. the red-on-blue petal at top. The second and third photos are the setup move and the end result, after reversing the setup move.

With the first three sides solved, we can start looking at opportunities, say, to solve some red petals. Let's let the pictures talk for a bit.

I reached this situation, where the last red petal and its yellow counterpart weren't ideally positioned for a swap.

This provides an opportunity to look at a "double setup move" situation. First, I dialed the red-on-yellow corner up onto the blue side, where it's in the desired "NW vs. NE" relationship to the yellow-on-red petal at front.

Then I dial up the yellow-on-red petal to form a bar against the red-on-yellow-and-now-also-blue. (Don't forget how you set this up!!)

OK, I've done the petal-swap algorithm, and it's time to restore the sides broken by not one, but two setup moves. I restored red first (hint: the blue corner at right isn't complete, so it's not ready to reunite with the blue side).

Except for the corners, the cube is now one petal swap away from being solved. Don't believe me? Look:

Here's that last petal swap, briefly:

And here's where that new wrinkle comes in, that we didn't have on the Super Ivy and Rex cubes.

STEP 7: ORIENT CORNERS. They're already permuted; i.e. in the correct places. Well, mostly. But a lot of them are turned the wrong way around, so you need to fix that. Unfortunately, that means doing a whole lot more "up-up-down-down" maneuvers, alternating right to left. Way, way more. Like, each time you do the algorithm to swap opposite corners (front and back on the top layer) is an up-up-down-down x3 (times three). So, like, here's a blue-orange-yellow corner that's actually diagnoally opposite the spot where it belongs, across the top side. Meanwhile, its opposite number is a white-green-orange corner that needs to flip sideways to be correctly positioned on the white side.

Prep move: With that white-green-orange corner at back, turn the front vertex to put the green-side-up (because the problem corner is also green-side-up).

Then do (starting on the right) three, I say 3, "up-up-down-down" patterns. This will bring the problem corner to the front of top, still green-side-up and thus, correctly aligned with the adjacent sides.

Yes, kids, I actually did that: I photographed every move in a triple up-up-down-down pattern. Just that once. Next, however, you have to undo that setup move:

Here's an out-of-position white-orange-blue corner. It's diagonally across the top from where it belongs. Meanwhile, in the spot opposite it, is the very yellow-red-blue corner that it needs to swap places with.

Bring white to the top to set up the swap, so blue-white-orange lands the right way around; do the 12-turn algorithm; and undo the setup move.

Around this time, you're starting to think about how strategic you may need to be, to ensure that all necessary corner swaps are possible via this across-the-top method. Perhaps you don't need to worry about that, provided you solved the white corners way back at the beginning. I don't know. Nevertheless, I took care to make sure I didn't leave the last two corners stranded on opposite vertices of the cube as I continued this series of edge swaps (without setup move) and edge flips (with). First, here's a case where the two corners (red-white-blue and blue-orange-yellow) are both where they belong, but flipped the wrong way around.

First, you have to do the edge swap (no setup move) to separate them from their target corners:

Then you do the edge-flip (bracketed by a setup move and its undo):

The same thing happened with the red-green-yellow and yellow-blue-orange corners:

Then, again, with the red-green-white and yellow-orange-green corners:

And at last we've solved the whole megilla (here's the other side for proof):

That wasn't so bad, was it? As I said, it's basically Super Ivy / Rex plus corner pieces. The longest stretch is still the petal swaps. But the techniques build on "up-up-down-down" in a nifty, geometric fashion, moving from a single (or maybe up to three) instance(s) of the side-facing, back-corners version for cycling the last three (or four) edges, to the double up-up-down-down (front corners) of the center cycle, to the petal swap's mirror-image pair of up-up-down-downs (with a hard-to-describe, "w" cube rotation in the middle), to the (have mercy) triple up-up-down-downs of the corner swap. Through several of these steps, you need to keep your eyes and mind on the task at hand, due to single and possibly double setup moves that need to be undone later. And there's a bunch of intuitive stuff in Steps 1 and 2, albeit following procedures that, with practice, can become second nature. It's all pairs of moves followed by undoing those moves in the same order, breaking things you've already solved and carefully fixing them, and strategizing to solve portions of the cube in a way that will make each successive step a little easier, if possible. It has a simplicity under a deceptive guise of complexity. Or maybe it's the other way around.

Product-wise, I'll only say that my personal Master Skewb is of about the same quality as the Rex Cube behind it, at the far right. Which is to say, not the best, but good enough to remain fun to play with. It's stickered, rather than tiled, which goes against my preference. Its movements are a little tight and raspy. It has a general feeling of flimsiness in the hands. But it does the job it signed up for, well enough to provide enjoyment – and I appreciate it for being just a step beyond the Rex Cube in how much work it takes to solve it. It means I get to spend more time on it, immersing myself more deeply in problem-solving and geometry and movement and color. It's all good.