Puzzles & Difficulties
Quickly compare different puzzles and their difficulty - all difficulties are based on opinions of the staff here in the KewbzUK office. What is easy for one, may be hard for another. These should only be taken as guidelines and not definitive facts. This guide is meant to help beginners decide which puzzle that should start on and how to progress through their cubing career.
WCA Puzzles
The WCA puzzles are competition legal events that are set out by the World Cubing Association. At WCA competitions cubers set out to time themselves and podium (1st/2nd/3rd) in events from 2x2 to 7x7, Pyraminx, Skewb, Megaminx, Square-1 and Clock. These 11 puzzles are the only type that are used during official WCA competitions and the most popular puzzles we sell.
Please Note: The 'steps to solve' below are approximates and are based off of the beginners method for each of the different puzzles
2x2
Steps to Solve: ≈3
3x3
Steps to Solve: ≈6
4x4
Steps to Solve: ≈8
5x5
Steps to Solve: ≈8
6x6
Steps to Solve: ≈8
7x7
Steps to Solve: ≈8
Clock
Steps to Solve: ≈3
Megaminx
Steps to Solve: ≈6
Pyraminx
Steps to Solve: ≈4
Skewb
Steps to Solve: ≈3
Square-1
Steps to Solve: ≈5
NON-WCA Puzzles
Non-WCA categorised puzzles are all other types of twisty puzzles that are not used at official WCA competitions such as the Mirror, Gear, Kibiminx, Fisher, Axis and windmill cubes etc.... These all boast there own unique challenge and its slightly harder to categorise them into difficulty levels.
8x8+ and gigaminx+ cubes are not exactly difficult if you know how to solve the smaller versions of those puzzles, they do however take longer and do require a lot of repetitiveness. We have marked them as 'Red' on our scale as a beginner would struggle to solve a 9x9 compared to a 3x3 (even though they require an extremely similar principal to solve).
Mirror
Gear
Windmill
Axis
Fisher
Kibiminx
Gigaminx +
8x8+
Puppet
NxN Puzzles
This is where things get interesting. An NxNxN (or NxN for short) puzzle is something like a 1x2x3 or 2x2x4 - It's something weird and wonderful that potentially 'Shape-Shifts' and doesn't always stay as a cube shape. A 3x3, no matter how much you scramble it, will always be a 3x3 shape, a 3x3x4 however (depending on the variant of 3x3x4) will morph into funky shapes and you may think its broken from time to time with a piece looking extremely out of place.
We thought we needed a whole block to go over these NxN puzzles and its going to be rather difficult to categorise these as well (main because we haven't really used them much). If you do decide to go for an NxN puzzle then please do be careful. due to the nature of them and they way they are built they can fall apart much easier than a normal 3x3/4x4/5x5 etc.....
We may not have put all of our NxN puzzles in the lists below but we will add to it as and when we try new ones.
1x2x2
1x1x3
2x2x3
2x3x3
2x2x4
2x2x5
2x2x6
2x2x7+
3x3x4
3x3x5+
3x3x9+
3x3x15+
