Before you start: hold the cube the right way
The solver assumes the standard colour scheme and a fixed grip. Find the white centre and point it at the ceiling. Find the green centre and point it at yourself. If your cube follows the standard scheme, red is now on your right, orange on your left, blue at the back and yellow underneath. Keep this grip for the whole entry and for the whole solution; the moves are written for it.
Centres never move relative to each other, so they are locked in the app. If your centres do not match this layout, your cube uses a different scheme: pick the closest standard colour for each of yours and keep the same relative positions.
Entering the colours
- Open the Solve my cube tab. The app starts from a solved cube; press Blank if you prefer to fill every sticker yourself.
- Pick a colour in the palette. The number on each swatch counts how many stickers of that colour you have placed; every colour needs exactly nine.
- Tap stickers on the 3D cube (drag the background to rotate it) or on the flat net on the right. Both show the same cube. The net is usually faster: white face on top, then orange, green, red and blue in a row, yellow underneath, each face as you would see it looking straight at it.
- Work one face at a time. Say the colours out loud as you tap them; it catches most slips.
- Press Solve.
A tip for the back and bottom faces: tilt the cube in your hands only as much as needed to see the face, then return to the grip. Rotating the whole cube without noticing is the most common way to enter a mirrored face.
What the solver checks
Before it searches, the solver proves the position can exist on a real cube. It rejects, with a message and a highlight:
| Message | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| A colour appears more or fewer than nine times | A sticker was skipped or painted twice. The count badges on the palette show which colour. |
| No such piece exists | A corner or edge has a colour combination no piece has, such as white next to yellow. One of its stickers is wrong. |
| The same piece appears twice | Two slots were given the same piece; another slot therefore has a wrong one. |
| One corner is twisted | The corner stickers are a real piece but turned in place. On a real cube this can only happen if a corner was popped and replaced. |
| One edge is flipped | Same idea for an edge. Check the last-layer edges first; they are the ones most often entered upside down. |
| Two pieces are swapped | Every sticker is a real piece, but the overall arrangement cannot be reached by turning. Two stickers were most likely entered on the wrong pieces. |
Reading and following the solution
The solution appears as a row of moves and as a big Next move card with a plain-English line, for example R': “turn the right layer anticlockwise”. Press the single step button to see one move, or play to let the cube run at the speed you choose. Step back if you lose your place. Tap any move in the list to jump straight to it; the cube on screen rewinds or fast-forwards to match.
Follow the moves on your real cube with the same grip you used for entry: white up, green in front. A plain letter is a clockwise quarter turn as you look at that face, an apostrophe is anticlockwise, a 2 is a half turn. The notation guide shows every move on a cube you can turn.
How it finds the route
6E Cube Game uses the two-phase algorithm, the standard method for computer solving since the 1990s. Phase one reduces the cube to a position where corners are oriented, edges are oriented and the middle-layer edges are in the middle layer; phase two finishes with half turns of four faces and any turns of U and D. Each phase is searched with pruning tables that estimate how far a position is from its goal, which is why solutions of about 20 moves arrive almost instantly. The search runs in a background thread on your device using an open-source implementation; the terms page credits it.
The result is short but not a human method. If you want to learn to solve without the app, start with the beginner method and come back to the solver whenever a cube is beyond rescue.
