Tubie Solution Finder

On this page you can find out how to solve your Tubie. We give a general method for solving any Tubie design with a standard pin layout. You just have to type in the location you are trying to reach, and select what level of help you want to receive.

You may be surprised by how few moves are required, but you have to make them in the right order! What's best is that these short solutions are often easy to learn and very neat to demonstrate. See the Cream Tea puzzle.

Fill in the sections below and click "Get help"

1. Firstly, find the Start position, En-Ra-Ha, by lining up the red pins. This is usually quick to do just by pushing pins until all the reds line up.

2. Then push the whole set of red pins around until the patterns on Wheel 0 and Wheel 1 match. In the "unrolled" example on the right, where you are trying to line up the green cells, this would mean pushing all five wheels up two spaces to match up the first two wheels.

3. Next, note how far each of the green cells is above its red pin. The cell on Wheel 1 is two cells above, the others are 1, 4, 6, and 5 spaces above their red pins. These five numbers would be entered in the box. Do the same exercise for your puzzle.

Enter YOUR five digits in this box, eg 21465

4. Now select the level of help you want. You can always get more. If you just want to know the least number of moves from Start, check only that box. Otherwise, choose as required.

5. Press the button

6. The Full Solution may start off with "All Up" or "All Down x 2" or something similar. This means push all five wheels around again, via the red pins, for one or more cells, and then continue with the other moves. The move notation is very simple, eg 25U means find a row where only the 2nd and 5th of the moving wheels have pins, and move it up, or away from you, by one cell. There may be a second row containing only these pins, you can use either. The moves 25U and 123D are illustrated.