What is the shape of the toy invented by Hungarian professor Ernő Rubik?

The story behind the answer

Cube is correct because Ernő Rubik’s famous puzzle is a 3×3×3 mechanical cube with six faces, each originally a single color. Its layers rotate independently, scrambling and restoring the colored squares—a design that only a cube’s geometry supports, not a sphere, pyramid, or cylinder.

Rubik, a Hungarian architecture professor, created it in 1974 to teach 3D spatial relationships, calling it the “Magic Cube” before it went global in 1980 as the Rubik’s Cube. With over 43 quintillion possible configurations, it became a worldwide icon and a cornerstone of speedcubing competitions. Memory tip: Rubik sounds like “cubic,” pointing straight to “cube.”