Rubik's Ufo

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The Rubik's Ufo puzzle is in the shape of a flying saucer. It consists of two disks, each with six segments. There are two types of moves - the disks can turn with respect to each other (by multiples of 60 degrees), or any half can be given a 180 degree twist so that three segments of the top disk are swapped with three segments of the bottom. The top disk is light grey, the other disk dark grey. The segments have colours along their sides so that adjacent segments should have matching colours. The Ufo is based on a simpler early puzzle by Rubik, called Rubik's Cheese. That puzzle has only one circular layer of six pieces, so it is like a Ufo that is restricted to do only twists and not disk turns. The Rubik's Cheese is discussed further on the page about a related puzzle called Kep Korong. The second picture above shows a puzzle that is based on a two-layer Square-1, but with only corner pieces in each layer so that it has a six-pointed star shape. The pieces come in three different colours of plastic, four of each colour. In the solved position, each third of the puzzle has a single colour. If your browser supports JavaScript, then you can play Rubik's Ufo by clicking the link below: