The Skewb is a combination puzzle- a mechanical puzzle

Mechanical puzzle

A mechanical puzzle is a puzzle presented as a set of mechanically interlinked pieces.- History :The oldest known mechanical puzzle comes from Greece and appeared in the 3rd century BC....

 in the style of Rubik's Cube

Rubik's Cube

Rubik's Cube is a 3-D mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik.Originally called the "Magic Cube", the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toy Corp. in 1980 and won the German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that...

—invented by Tony Durham and marketed by Uwe Mèffert

Uwe Mèffert

Uwe Mèffert has manufactured and sold mechanical puzzles in the style of Rubik's Cube since the original Cube craze. His first design was the Pyraminx and others include the Megaminx, Skewb and Skewb Diamond...

. Although it is cubical in shape, it differs from Rubik's construction in that its axes of rotation pass through the corners of the cube rather than the centres of the faces. There are four such axes, one for each space diagonal

Space diagonal

In a rectangular box or a magic cube, the four space diagonals are the lines that go from a corner of the box or cube, through the center of the box or cube, to the opposite corner...

 of the cube. As a result, it is a deep-cut puzzle in which each twist affects all six faces.

Mèffert's original name for this puzzle was the Pyraminx Cube, to emphasise that it was part of a series including his first tetrahedral puzzle Pyraminx

Pyraminx

The Pyraminx is a tetrahedral puzzle similar to the Rubik's Cube. It was invented and patented by Uwe Meffert, and introduced by Tomy Toys of Japan in 1981. Meffert continues to sell it in his toy shop, ....

. The catchier name Skewb was coined by Douglas Hofstadter

Douglas Hofstadter

Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...

 in his Metamagical Themas

Metamagical Themas

Metamagical Themas is a collection of eclectic articles written for Scientific American during the early 1980s by Douglas Hofstadter, and published together as a book in 1985 by Basic Books ....

column, and Mèffert liked it enough not only to market the Pyraminx Cube under this name but also to name some of his other puzzles after it, such as the Skewb Diamond

Skewb Diamond

The Skewb Diamond is an octahedron-shaped puzzle similar to the Rubik's Cube. It has 14 movable pieces which can be rearranged in a total of 138,240 possible combinations. This puzzle is the dual polyhedron of the Skewb.- Description :...

.

Higher order Skewbs, named Master Skewb and Elite Skewb, have also been made.