2x2 Rubik's Cube Solver (Pocket Cube)

Paint or paste your Pocket Cube

A 2x2 has no center pieces, so there is no wrong way to hold it while you paint. Start on any face: the solver works out the orientation from the corners, then tells you which colors to keep on top and in front while you turn. Keys 1 to 6 pick a color and 0 or E picks the eraser, and Fill solved paints a solved cube in one go when your puzzle is only a few turns from solved.

What the solver does need is the standard color scheme: white opposite yellow, red opposite orange, green opposite blue. If your puzzle uses other colors, paint each sticker as the standard color that sits in the same place, and use Colors to make the palette show your own shades.

Mixed the cube from solved with a written sequence? Open the Scramble tab, type it, for example R U R' F2, and press Apply scramble. All 24 stickers fill in exactly as that scramble leaves them.

How many moves to solve a 2x2: the optimal answer

Any 2x2 can be solved in 11 moves or fewer when a half turn counts as one move, or 14 if you count only quarter turns. That limit is small because the puzzle is small: 3,674,160 positions once you ignore how the whole cube is held. Most scrambles sit close to the limit. Just over half of all positions are exactly 9 moves from solved, about nine in ten need 8, 9 or 10, and only 2,644 need the full 11.

The solver checks all of them. It holds one corner still, runs a breadth-first search outward from the solved cube and records how far every position is from solved. Solving your cube then means picking, at each step, a turn that brings it one move closer, which always ends in a shortest solution. The table is built in a background worker in your own browser and kept in browser storage, so the next visit starts faster.

Optimal solution or beginner steps

After you press Solve, the answer comes in one of two forms. Optimal is the default: the shortest sequence for your exact position, the fastest way back to solved.

Beginner, step by step solves the same cube the way people learn to do it by hand, in three stages: build the first layer, turn the last-layer corners so their yellow stickers face up, then swap those corners into place. It runs longer, about 36 moves on average, but every stage has a short note on what it achieves, so you can see why the moves work. Switch between the two whenever you like; the solver works out the same cube again. To learn the three stages yourself, with every algorithm shown in 3D, follow the guide on how to solve a 2x2 Rubik’s cube.

2x2 solver formula: reading R, U and F

Searching for a 2x2 formula usually means one of two things: a fixed algorithm from a beginner method, or the moves for the cube in your hands. This page gives the second. Because it keeps the corner at the bottom, back and left in place, every optimal answer is written with just three faces:

A plain letter is a clockwise quarter turn as you look at that face, an apostrophe makes it counter-clockwise, and a 2 means a half turn. So R U2 F' reads: right face clockwise, top face twice, front face counter-clockwise. The cube notation guide covers the other letters you will meet on bigger puzzles.

Why the 2x2 solver says your cube is impossible

When the solver refuses a position, that position cannot be reached by turning, so something in the colors is off. The message names the problem and outlines the stickers to check:

• A color appears too often or too rarely Every color must show up exactly four times.
• A corner that does not exist Each corner has three different colors in a fixed order. White and yellow, for example, never share a corner.
• Two identical corners Usually one of them has a sticker painted wrong.
• A twisted corner All the colors are right, but one corner is rotated in place. That happens when a cube pops apart and goes back together carelessly. Twist that corner back on the real puzzle, or recheck its three stickers.

Following a 2x2 solution on your real cube

Before the first move, hold your puzzle the way the solution panel says, with the named colors on top and in front, and keep that grip until the end. The moves assume the cube never rotates in your hands, and with no centers to go by, one quarter-turn of the whole cube is enough to send every later move to the wrong face.

Step through the answer with Next move, or open Full screen to see one large move at a time while both hands are busy. Copy moves and Copy share link keep the solution for later. Play with this cube opens the same position in the 2x2 cube simulator, where you can try the moves on a virtual Pocket Cube before you touch the real one.