it never stops thinking — drag to orbit it
In the spring of 1974, in a flat in Budapest, a young professor of architecture named Ernő Rubik glued together twenty-seven little wooden blocks, trying to build a teaching aid that would move in three dimensions without falling apart. When he had it, he turned the top layer, watched the colors scatter — and then spent a month getting them back. He had built the puzzle and become its first victim in the same afternoon. Hungary called it the bűvös kocka, the magic cube. The rest of the world came to know it by his name.
This is that cube, floating in a dark studio: forty-three quintillion states and one of them at peace. Twist it by hand, scramble it, race the clock — or hand it back and watch it solve itself along the shortest path it can find, move by move. And when you are ready to learn the old road home, the LEARN panel teaches the beginner's method chapter by chapter, plus a cabinet of the classic patterns.
drag a layer to twist it • drag the dark to orbit • wheel to zoom • U D L R F B keys twist the faces as you see them (SHIFT for prime) • M E S slices • X Y Z roll the cube • ENTER scramble • SPACE solve • BACKSPACE undo • T learn • H help
On a phone, a button pad rises from the bottom of the glass. The clock arms when you scramble and starts on your first twist; the cube keeps your best time.
The suite is Hungarian, for the city that raised the man: A Hungarian minor, the scale with two augmented seconds that Liszt heard in the cafés of Pest. A slow verbunkos for turning the cube over in your hands, a flying friss csárdás when the clock runs, chords chopped on the offbeats the way a kontra fiddle keeps the dance honest — and the arcade's old echo canon underneath, the tune answered one bar late, an octave down, like the Danube giving it back.
The beginner's method solves the cube in three storeys: white floor, middle walls, yellow roof. Seven chapters, four algorithms worth keeping. Each chapter below opens inside the game, where every algorithm has a SHOW button that turns the cube for you.
Not every scrambled cube is lost — some are art. Click one and the cube weaves it from solved; hit SPACE afterward and watch it find the way back.