The 36 Cube is a three-dimensional sudoku puzzle created by ThinkFun. The puzzle consists of a gray base that resembles a city skyline, plus 36 colored towers. The towers come in six different colors and six different heights. The goal of the puzzle is to place all the towers onto the base so as to form a level cube with each of the six colors appearing once, and only once, in each row and column. The 36 cube was invented by Dr. Derrick Niederman, a PhD. at MIT. He came up with the idea while writing a book on whole numbers, after unearthing an 18th-century mathematical hypothesis. This supposition, the 36 officer problem, requires placing six regiments of six differently ranked officers in a 6-x-6 square without having any rank or regiment in the same column. Such an arrangement would form a Graeco-Latin square. Euler conjectured there was no solution to this problem. Although Euler was correct, his conjecture was not settled until Gaston Tarry came up with an exhaustive proof in 1901.
Euler's 36 officer problem is a mental challenge, which can be attempted either in one's head or on paper, whereas the 36 cube is a mechanical puzzle that must be played on a manufactured grid. Therefore, it requires some abstract thinking, and a certain amount of special insight.
The 36 Cube is, however, subtly different from the 36 officer problem. Careful inspection of the pieces reveals that two of the pieces are special. These two pieces will fit on certain parts of the base differently from other pieces of the same height. With this subtle modification, there are in fact 96 possible solutions to the 36 Cube puzzle.
Closer view
One row of a trial solution
A possible solution: the two special pieces are outlined (having two pieces of the same height on a row violates the 36 officers problem)
geometry, a hypercube is an n-dimensional analogue of a square (n = 2) and a cube (n = 3). It is a closed, compact, convex figure whose 1-skeleton consists...
The 36Cube is a three-dimensional sudoku puzzle created by ThinkFun. The puzzle consists of a gray base that resembles a city skyline, plus 36 colored...
geometry, the truncated cube, or truncated hexahedron, is an Archimedean solid. It has 14 regular faces (6 octagonal and 8 triangular), 36 edges, and 24 vertices...
organizers disqualified him and awarded the third-place to Chris Narrikkattu. 36Cube Blendoku Constraint satisfaction problem Cracking the Cryptic Futoshiki...
The GameCube is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November...
his 1978 novel Life: A User's Manual around a 10×10 Graeco-Latin square. 36cube Block design Blocking (statistics) Combinatorial design This has gone under...
"It Was a Good Day" is a song by American rapper Ice Cube, released on February 23, 1993 by Lench Mob and Priority as the second single from his third...
mathematician, game designer, and national squash champion. His most recent game, 36Cube, has been described by Reuters as "a wolf in sheep's clothing" because...
puzzle in this category is the 3x3x3 puzzle, commonly known as the Rubik's Cube. Participants in this sport are known as "speedcubers," who focus specifically...
Leslie's cube is a device used in the measurement or demonstration of the variations in thermal radiation emitted from different surfaces at the same temperature...
A CubeSat is a class of small satellite with a form factor of 10 cm (3.9 in) cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than 2 kg (4.4 lb) per unit, and often...
Pocket Cube (also known as the Mini Cube) is a 2×2×2 combination puzzle invented in 1970 by American puzzle designer Larry D. Nichols. The cube consists...
The discography of Ice Cube, an American rapper, consists of ten studio albums, six compilation albums, one extended play, as well as twelve movie soundtracks...
and the United States. It is defined as the volume of a cube with sides of 1 yard (3 feet, 36 inches, 0.9144 meters) in length. The IEEE symbol for the...
The World Cube Association (WCA) is the worldwide non-profit organization that regulates and holds competitions for mechanical puzzles that are operated...
Salford close CUBE gallery due to losses". BBC News Manchester. 2 October 2013. Retrieved 14 March 2015. Cube Gallery website 53°28′36.45″N 2°14′27.10″W...
was an undulating LED floor with 36cube-shaped lifts provided by Tait Tower; placed in the middle of stage, the cubes were clad in LED video, measured...
transparent plastic slide storage cube-shaped magazine, about 5.5 cm in each dimension (a bit larger than a slide), that held 36 to 44 slides, depending on the...
Global Information
Closer view
One row of a trial solution
A possible solution: the two special pieces are outlined (having two pieces of the same height on a row violates the 36 officers problem)
