You want to make up a set of 27 1-cm cubes with their faces variously colored red, yellow and blue. You want to do this in such a way that you can form any of three 3-cm cubes: one that is all red on the outside, one that is all yellow on the outside or one that is all blue on the outside. You can't repaint the original 27 cubes again--the same set of colorations for the 1-cm cubes must work regardless of whether you want the outside to be red, yellow or blue. How must you color the faces of the 27 1-cm cubes?
Then consider the same problem with 64 1-cm cubes using four colors this time, fitting together to make any one of four 4-cm solid-color-on-the-outside cubes.
Is there a method that will work for n^3 unit cubes with n colors?
The general algorithm is as follows:
Move the leftmost plane of cubes to the right extreme of the cube.
Then, move the frontmost plane of cubes to the back extreme of the cube.
Then, move the bottommost plane of cubes to the top extreme of the cube.
Puzzle Thoughts
