By day, I'm a math and science teacher at a community college. While looking for different challenges to give my students, I came up with the idea for a puzzle using wooden blocks. I was originally looking at the classic '15' puzzle (the one where squares numbered 1 through 15 are set in a frame, and you slide them around to get them in numeric order) and was trying to create a three-dimensional version of it. What ended up coming out was the Sadisticube. I started producing them in 2011, spent some time analyzing different ways of solving the puzzle, and wrote a program to enter a set of blocks and find the solution.
I found the mathematics behind the puzzle very interesting and gave a presentation on Sadisticube at a Mathematical Association of America meeting at Bridgewater State University in 2012 and another at Colgate University. At these talks I passed out a paper detailing my work on the mathematics of the cube which you can read here: sadisticubepaper.jpg.
Over the past several years I have continued to work on variations of the puzzle and to write programs to analyze and solve them. In the latest version of the program, as computing power has become more efficient, I simply run through the various orientations and positions of the blocks to determine all possible solutions. This program is generalized and can solve any set of blocks - regardless of how many (or few) colors are used to paint them. It returns every possible solution, though not necessarily every possible arrangement of every solution. The solver program currently running from this website (under 'Solve') will return just the first solution it finds. Entering your blocks in a different order, or even different orientation, may yield different results.
Sadisticube blocks are hand-painted with two coats of acrylic paint and a top layer of varnish. Each set has a unique combination of blocks and all sets are chosen to have at least one 'proper' solution - that is, a solution where each face of the overall cube has a different color. Many sets have more than one solution, often containing duplicate colors (two red faces, for example).
It is important to me that this product remain low-tech and environmentally friendly. The standard packaging is a nylon mesh drawstring bag, but I will soon be introducing plastic-free bags or containers.
I hope you enjoy the challenge of the puzzle. It's intended to be fun for ages 7 and up. It can be absorbing to just rearrange the blocks, trying to match the colors - no math necessary. It is also a fun exercise to dive into it and write a program or figure out a process that will solve the puzzle.
Jean-Marie
