Cube Puzzle Quartet

Four tricky Cube Puzzles - can you get the pieces back into their boxes? 

This year at Maker Faire Bay Area, Ultimaker is offering a challenge: Solve one of our 3D-printed Cube Puzzles and you get to keep it! Or 3D print one yourself with these files, in four different levels.

Level 1 = Easy The Soma Cube has 240 different solutions, so it’s easier to solve than the other puzzles. This puzzle was very popular in the 1960’s, and people enjoy assembling the pieces into many other pleasing shapes like stairs or pyramids. 

Level 2 = Medium The Hoffmann Cube is the earliest known 3x3x3 Cube Puzzle, created in 1893. This puzzle has only six types of solutions, up to symmetry. One interesting thing about the Hoffmann Cube is that all of its pieces are flat! 

Level 3 = Hard The Coffin Cube has only one solution and it is also known as the Half Hour Puzzle, created by Stewart Coffin. All four of the puzzle patterns used in our Cube Puzzle Challenge are from Stewart Coffin’s excellent book Geometric Puzzle Design. 

Level 4 = Diabolical The Nob Cube also has only one solution and it is notoriously difficult to solve. Some puzzle makers craft this puzzle out of wood and it is said that the puzzle is so difficult that solvers sometimes resort to examining the grain of the wood to figure out how the pieces fit together. Are you up to the challenge?

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