Pyraminx Solver

Entering the four faces: 3D view, flat net or a scramble

The solver opens on a 3D Pyraminx: drag it to turn it and tap a triangle to paint it, so you copy your puzzle face by face as you hold it. Each of the four big faces is cut into nine small triangles, 36 stickers in all. The Flat net tab unfolds the same puzzle so you can check every face at once. Pick Green, Yellow, Red or Blue, or press 1 to 4; a color that already has its nine triangles takes no more until you clear one.

If you mixed your puzzle from solved with a written scramble, type it into Or type a scramble instead, for example U L' R B' u r', and press Apply scramble. The field reads WCA notation, U, L, R and B for the corners and u, l, r and b for the tips, and assumes the scramble was applied with the green face toward you and the yellow face down.

How the solver finds a short solution

When you press Solve, your puzzle is first turned as a whole so that its four center pieces sit in their home corners. That position goes to the Pyraminx search of cubing.js, an open-source puzzle library, which runs in your browser. Across 200 random positions in our tests its solutions averaged about 12 moves including tips, and the longest had 17.

Every solution is replayed on the site’s own model of your puzzle before it is shown, so you never get one that fails to solve it. The tips are handled separately: each needs at most one twist, and the solver adds those twists after the corner turns.

When your colors describe an impossible Pyraminx

Once the last triangle is painted, the colors are checked, and Solve stays locked until they describe a puzzle that turning can actually produce. The problem stickers get a red outline, and the status line names the rule that failed: a color not used exactly nine times, center pieces in an arrangement no real Pyraminx has, a missing or repeated piece, one edge flipped on its own, or exactly two edges swapped. Turning always flips edges in pairs and never swaps just two of them. If the net matches your puzzle exactly, it was probably taken apart and put back wrongly.

Corners first, tips last: reading and following the answer

Every answer comes with the same grip: “Hold the Pyraminx with the green face toward you and the yellow face down.” Held like that, one corner points up (U), two sit left and right at the front (L and R), and the fourth is at the back (B). A capital letter turns that corner’s tip together with the layer beneath it a third of a turn clockwise, as you look straight at the corner. A lowercase letter twists only the tip, and an apostrophe reverses either kind.

A tip only ever turns about its own corner, so you can make its twist at any point and the puzzle still ends up solved. The replay has Play, Next move and a Speed from 0.5× to 4×, and Play with this puzzle loads the position into the Pyraminx online simulator to try first.

How to solve a Pyraminx yourself in four stages

You need no algorithms to use the solver, and learning the puzzle by hand is quick as well. A beginner method has four stages:

1. Tips. Twist each tip until it matches the center piece beneath it. That takes one twist at most.
2. Centers. Turn each corner until the three center triangles on every face show one color, again one turn at most per corner.
3. First face. Bring the three edges around one face, usually yellow, into place. This part is solved by looking, not by memorizing.
4. Last three edges. With the finished face down, R U R' U R U R' cycles the three top edges one way and R' U' R U' R' U' R the other. If the two top edges on the front face are in place but flipped, R' L R L' U L' U' L flips them.

Those three sequences are all a first method needs.

Mini Pyraminx and other triangle puzzles

The Pyraminx is the four-sided pyramid often called the triangle Rubik’s cube, and it is an official WCA event. It has 14 moving parts: four tips, four three-colored center pieces and six edges. Anything with that layout can go into this solver whatever its size, so a mini or keychain Pyraminx is painted and solved exactly like a full-size one.

The palette has four fixed colors. If your puzzle uses other ones, give each of its faces one of the four; should the solver then call the center pieces impossible, swap two of your choices. A pyramid with more layers per edge, such as the Master Pyraminx, is a different puzzle this page cannot read. A cube that turns around its corners goes to the Skewb solver, and the classic 3x3 to the Rubik’s cube solver.