Rubik's Snake: The One With No Solution

Quick answer: the Rubik's Snake is 24 triangular wedges joined by spring bolts that twist but never separate, invented by Ernő Rubik in 1981. It has no solution: you shape it into figures rather than solving it. It is not the same thing as a snake cube, which does have one.

Best for: fidgeters, children, and anyone who has bought the wrong snake by accident.

Two different puzzles are called a snake, both involve a chain of connected pieces, and one of them has a correct answer while the other does not. That confusion is worth clearing up before anything else.

What Is a Rubik's Snake?

Twenty-four right isosceles triangular prisms, connected in a line by spring bolts. Each joint rotates in quarter turns. Nothing comes apart, ever: the bolts hold the wedges together permanently while letting them twist.

Ernő Rubik designed it in 1981, riding the success of the Cube. It is also sold as the Rubik's Twist and, generically, as a magic snake.

How Do You Solve a Rubik's Snake?

You do not, and that is the design rather than a disappointment.

There is no scrambled state and no solved state. What there is instead is a very large set of shapes you can twist it into: a straight line, a ball, a dog, a duck, a rectangle, and whatever else people have worked out. The straight line and the ball are the two most people aim for, and the ball is the one that looks hardest and is mostly a known sequence.

The usual instruction sheet is a list of target figures with twist sequences, which makes it closer to origami than to a puzzle in the sense used throughout this guide. There is nothing to discover, only something to follow or to invent.

How Many Shapes Can It Make?

At most 4²³, which is 70,368,744,177,664, and genuinely fewer than that.

The arithmetic is simple: twenty-four wedges give twenty-three joints, and each joint has four positions. The reason the true count is lower is physical rather than mathematical. Many of those configurations would require the snake to pass through itself, and it cannot, so they do not exist as shapes.

That gap between the combinatorial count and the achievable count is unusual. Most puzzles are constrained by their mechanism; this one is constrained by the fact that solid objects cannot occupy the same space.

Is It the Same as a Snake Cube?

No, and this is the most useful thing on the page, because the two are constantly mistaken for each other.

A snake cube is 27 cubes threaded on an elastic cord. It has exactly one goal, to fold into a 3x3x3 cube, and a definite solution. Get the order of folds wrong and it will not close. It is a genuine puzzle with a right answer, and we sell one: Snake Cube, with a full walkthrough.

A Rubik's Snake is 24 wedges on rigid bolts with no target shape and no solution.

If you were given a snake-shaped puzzle and you are looking for the answer, check which one you have. If it folds into a cube and refuses, you have a snake cube and there is a solution. If it makes a dog, you have a Rubik's Snake and there is not.

Is It Actually a Good Puzzle?

It is a good object and a weak puzzle, and it is worth being clear about which you are buying.

As a fidget it is excellent: quiet, satisfying, endlessly repositionable, and robust enough to survive a child. As a problem it offers very little, because without a target there is nothing to fail at, which is the same distinction drawn in dexterity puzzles between a fidget object and a puzzle.

Where it earns genuine respect is as a teaching object. Twenty-three joints with four states each is a very concrete way to meet exponential growth, and the fact that most of those states are physically impossible is a better lesson in constraints than most textbooks manage.

Why Did Rubik Make It?

It arrived in 1981, at the peak of the Cube's success, and it is a revealing thing for the same person to have designed.

The Cube is a puzzle with one answer and an enormous state space you have to navigate back out of. The Snake is the same designer's instinct for joints and rotation applied with the goal removed. Both are chains of constrained rotations; only one has somewhere to get to.

Read that way it is less a failed puzzle than a deliberate toy, and it sold in the millions on exactly those terms.

What Should You Look For in One?

Joint tension, which is the only thing that really varies between copies.

The wedges turn on spring bolts, and the springs are what hold a shape once you have made it. A new snake with tight joints will keep a dog standing up. A worn or cheaply made one will sag under its own weight, and at that point it stops being satisfying, because nothing you build stays built.

Tension also loosens with use, which is normal and usually adjustable: most designs have a screw at each joint. If a second-hand one feels floppy, that is generally fixable rather than terminal.

What Should You Try Instead?

If you wanted a chain with a right answer, that is the Snake Cube, and it is one of the best-value puzzles we make.

If you wanted something to fidget with, Spiral Cone is built for exactly that and explained here. If you wanted a twisty puzzle with a solution, that is the Cube, which we also do not make.

The range we do make is in mechanical puzzles.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Rubik's Snake?

Twenty-four triangular wedges joined by spring bolts that rotate in quarter turns but never separate, invented by Ernő Rubik in 1981. It is also sold as the Rubik's Twist.

How do you solve a Rubik's Snake?

There is nothing to solve. It has no scrambled or solved state. You twist it into target shapes such as a ball, a dog or a straight line, usually following a published sequence, which makes it closer to origami than to a puzzle.

Is a Rubik's Snake the same as a snake cube?

No. A snake cube is 27 cubes on an elastic cord that folds into a 3x3x3 cube and has exactly one solution. A Rubik's Snake is 24 rigid wedges on bolts with no target and no solution. They are routinely confused.

How many positions does a Rubik's Snake have?

At most 4 to the power 23, which is 70,368,744,177,664. The real number of distinct shapes is lower, because many configurations would require the snake to pass through itself and are physically impossible.

Is a Rubik's Snake good for children?

Yes, better than most puzzles. There is nothing to fail at, it is robust, it is quiet, and twenty-three joints with four states each is a very concrete introduction to exponential growth.