The Square-0 (a.k.a. SQ0) is a cube-shaped twisty puzzle. It is a lower-order version of the famous shape-shifting puzzle Square-1. It was invented in 2015 by YouTuber DGCubes (Daniel Goodman) for a school project where students were given the task to invent something and then present it to the class in Spanish. To make the prototype, Goodman bought a Square-1 puzzle and simply "bandaged" each corner piece with an adjacent edge piece. We say "simply" because turning a Square-1 into a Square-0 is not hard to do, but we do think the original idea is GENIUS! Apparently we're also not alone on that since ShengShou decided to mass-produce the puzzle and nowadays you can buy it directly under the name "SengSo SQ0".

It might not be very obvious at first glance, but the Square-0 can actually be thought of as a bandaged Tower Cube (2x2x3) shape-mod. The top and bottom faces each have 4 identical corner pieces, and the puzzle itself is made of 3 layers. The only difference between the mechanism of the Square-0 and the one found in the Tower Cube (2x2x3) is that the former only has two parts in its middle layer. This makes the Square-0 even easier to solve than the Tower Cube (2x2x3), which is already considered an easy puzzle to solve. Our computer simulation shows that the Square-0 only has around 80k possible combinations.

The Square-0 is not an official WCA puzzle. Its predecessor, the Square-1, is the only shape-shifting official WCA puzzle. At the time of writing, we couldn't find any unofficial record for the fastest solve of this puzzle.

Comments 20

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I can confirm that this is not a normal 3 by 3

cmp73914

I solve it in 20 seconds!!

DragonWolfZinthra

Hhhhhhhh. This really took me back. Oh lord. Still good though.

jimmy

BRO i solved it in 2 moves!!

Kozyn

Wowzers! this is fun but how do you switch around the bottom layer pieces???

Mark

I got real fast at it so now im on average of 2-3 seconds.

Santiago

I was very close to solving but I had to switch pieces but idk how to do that

Jenna

Really fun! But I don’t know how to solve it.

MelonGuy44

Awesome! nice change to square 2 which I just spent ages on....

Astral

I just solved it in 8 moves

potatoeyo

the only cube in the Square-(number) series that I can solve

mem

im dont know how to solve this

Ant

So fun and easy! I mastered it in only one night! Good work Grubiks!

Not a very good cuber

Yay I solved it because I got a middle layer skip!

Hayden

@The master, you solve the middle layer with R2 U2 R2 U2

Astral

Dang, this thing is hard to solve if you don't know algorithms. I solved it though, but the middle layer is weird as heck.

TheMaster

BRUH how do you get the second half of the middle layer solved??? But I love it!

EmmettShark2000

It so hard!

CrazyWind X

2nd comment ! this cube was very easy to solve.

xyanCubes

First Comment! Also a really fun and easy puzzle, good alternative to Square-1 when you don't feel like having a challenge

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