What the Skewb is
The Skewb looks like a cube but turns completely differently: its cuts run diagonally through the corners, so every move rotates half of the puzzle around one corner. It has 3,149,280 positions, and every move is a third of a turn.
Reading a Skewb scramble
Each letter names the corner the turn pivots around, and the turn is clockwise as you look at that corner, a third of a rotation. A prime reverses it. Skewb scrambles use only four letters, U, L, R and B, and no half turns.
Hold the puzzle in the same starting orientation for every scramble; with diagonal turns it is easy to lose track, so check your result against the scramble before solving.
How the scramble is generated
cubing.js chooses a Skewb position at random and finds an 11-move sequence that reaches it, the random-state approach the WCA also uses for this puzzle.
Practising the Skewb
Like the Pyraminx, the Skewb is a fast event where inspection does a lot of work. Time solves in groups of five and track the average; the timer keeps your Skewb times in their own session.