Speed mode: chase a faster time on the same 3D board
One clock, one score, and a separate record for each difficulty. Here is exactly how Cubo measures a solve, so you know what you are racing against.
Free on iPhone.
How the clock behaves
- It starts when the board is generated, which is before your first tap. There is no ready countdown to wait through.
- It runs in the open at the top of the screen while you play, in minutes and seconds.
- It freezes at the moment the final piece lands, and the frozen time is what the Solved banner shows.
- Relaxed mode runs the same board without drawing the clock at all.
The score, in one line
Cubo scores a solve as a difficulty base minus five points for each second you took, with a floor of 100. Nothing else feeds into it: no multiplier, no combo, no bonus for a piece placed on the first try.
| Difficulty | Base | Solve in 60s | Solve in 120s | Floor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 1000 | 700 | 400 | 100 |
| Medium | 2000 | 1700 | 1400 | 100 |
| Hard | 3000 | 2700 | 2400 | 100 |
Because the penalty is a flat five points a second, a harder board is worth taking slowly: a Hard solve in three minutes still outscores a perfect Easy one.
Best times are kept per difficulty
Cubo stores one best time for Easy, one for Medium and one for Hard, and a new time only replaces the record if it is faster. They live in a file on your iPhone, which means they survive between sessions and never leave the device.
Where the seconds actually go
The controls are the same in both modes, so a faster solve comes from the decisions rather than from tapping harder.
- Read the gap before you rotateThe dark space left in the wireframe box is the shape you need. The position arrows only offer legal spots, so if a piece has almost no positions, it is a strong constraint and worth placing early.
- Let the rotation list do the workRotate cycles the distinct orientations only, up to 24 of them. Cycling once through the whole list is a bounded, quick way to see whether a piece can go in at all right now.
- Start from a piece that is already selectedThe first piece in the tray is selected as soon as the board appears, with a preview already on the board, so the first second is not spent on a tap that does nothing.
Related reading
Questions about the clock
When does the timer start and stop?
It starts the moment the board is built, before your first tap, and freezes at the instant the last piece is placed. Nothing pauses it during the round, so a solve time is the whole round from board to solved.
How is the score calculated?
The score starts from a base that depends on the difficulty, which is 1000 on Easy, 2000 on Medium and 3000 on Hard, and subtracts five points for every elapsed second. It never falls below 100, so a slow solve still scores.
Is there a leaderboard?
No. Best times are kept on your own device, one for each difficulty, and nothing is uploaded or compared against other players.
Does a Relaxed solve count towards a best time?
A best time is recorded for the difficulty whenever a board is solved, and the difficulty keeps its own record. What changes between the modes is whether the clock is on screen while you play.
Does restarting a board cost me anything?
No. The restart arrow builds a fresh board and a fresh clock. Nothing is deducted and no attempt is counted.
Set a first best time