Square-1 facts and solving instructions

The Square-1 consists of three layers. The upper and lower layers contain kite and triangular pieces. They are also called corner and edge pieces, respectively. There are altogether 8 kite and 8 triangular pieces. The kite pieces are 60 degrees wide, while the triangular pieces are 30 degrees wide, relative to the center of the layer.

The middle layer contains two trapezoid pieces, which together may form an irregular hexagon or a square.

Each layer can be rotated freely, and if the boundaries of pieces in all layers line up, the puzzle can be twisted vertically, interchanging half of the top layer with half of the bottom. In this way, the pieces of the puzzle can be scrambled. Note that because the kite pieces are precisely twice the angular width of the triangular pieces, the two can be freely intermixed, with two triangular pieces taking the place of a single kite piece and vice versa. This leads to bizarre shape changes within the puzzle at any point.

For the puzzle to be in cube shape, the upper and lower layers must have alternating kite and triangular pieces, with 4 kite and 4 triangular pieces on each layer, and the middle layer must have a square shape. However, since only two shapes are possible for the middle layer, there is a quick sequence of twists which changes the shape of the middle layer from one to the other without touching the rest of the puzzle.

Once the puzzle has a cube shape, the upper and lower layers are cut in an Iron Cross-like fashion, or equivalently cut by two concentric (standard) crosses, that make an angle with each other.

Like Rubik's Cube, the pieces are colored. For the puzzle to be solved, not only does it need to be in cube shape, but each face of the cube must also have a uniform color. In its solved (or original) state, viewing the cube from the face with the word "Square-1" printed on it, the colors are: white on top, green on the bottom, yellow in front, red on the left, orange on the right, and blue behind. Alternative versions of the Square-1 may have different color schemes.