Twist

📖 Strategy guide: How to solve Twist: parity, the corner rule and the 15-twist grid

How to play

The board is a 3×3 grid of tiles with four round rotors, one on each crossing. Tap a rotor, or press 1–4, and the four tiles around it move one place clockwise. There is no counter-clockwise turn: going back takes three more twists of the same rotor. Rearrange the tiles until the board matches the small goal picture above it. Fewer twists is better; par is the smallest number that solves the puzzle.

Daily, levels and challenges

Normal uses tiles numbered 1 to 9 that must end in reading order. Its daily puzzle is the same for everyone and changes at midnight UTC, with a par of 6 to 8; 🎲 deals a random one instead. Easy has three colours, three tiles of each, to sort into solid rows, par 4 to 6; each colour carries its own shape, so it works without colour vision. Hard is numbered again, par 10 to 12. ⚔️ copies a link to the exact puzzle and level so a friend can try to beat your count. ↶ takes back a twist, ↻ restarts.

How the puzzles are made

Each puzzle starts from the solved grid, which is scrambled by turning rotors backwards a random number of times, so every puzzle can be solved. The numbered grid has 362,880 possible arrangements. A search through them, forward from the scramble and backward from the goal until the two meet, finds the fewest twists that solve it: that is the par. A scramble is kept only when its par falls inside the range of its level. No numbered arrangement needs more than 15 twists, and no colour arrangement more than 9.

Tips

• A corner tile is moved by one rotor only, an edge tile by two, the centre tile by all four. Place a corner first: the other three rotors never touch it and can always finish the remaining eight tiles.
• A rotor only ever moves four tiles, so park finished tiles outside the rotor you are using.
• With the top row done, the two bottom rotors alone reach only 120 of the 720 ways the other six tiles can sit, so expect to disturb the row for a moment.
• Two twists of one rotor swap its tiles diagonally.