The minimal number of inputs in the local function of a non-trivial cellular automaton is two. Such a function can be viewed as as a kind of binary operation. If this operation is associative, it forms, together with the set of states, a semigroup. There are 18 semigroups of order 3 up to equivalence, and they define 18 cellular automata rules with three states. We investigate these rules with respect to solvability and show that all of them are solvable, meaning that the state of a given cell after n iterations can be expressed by an explicit formula. We derive the relevant formulae for all 18 rules using some additional properties possessed by particular semigroups of order 3, such as commutativity and idempotence.