Octacube (puzzle)

For Ocneanu's octacube see Octacube (mathematics)
8 cubes in the shape of the octacube puzzle

Octacube (by Mindope) is a type of puzzle made up of eight cubes with colors on the faces. The object of the puzzle is to arrange the eight cubes into a 2×2×2 cube such that all faces of the big cube show the same color, and all inside faces of the small cubes that magnetically touch are the same color. There are six colors in the puzzle, and each of the eight cubes shows the six colors, one per face.

There are some clever mathematics behind this puzzle. It turns out that for the above stated constraints, there are only five possible solutions, and they happen to be made up of the same eight cubes. It also turns out that these eight cubes must all have in common four pairs of adjacent colors. This condition, in fact, is both necessary and sufficient to yield the set of cubes giving the two solutions.

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