Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting
back. Piet Hein
I've been on this solving
Lesdubois puzzles kick lately, and especially enjoyed
Cube Root,
Hex Wrench and
Sheet Bend. There's something about a tangible puzzle to play
with that really draws me in.
That's probably why I was so completely taken in by a puzzle
given to me by my father in the mid-'70's called Soma Cube,
invented by Danish designer and mathemetician Piet Hein. I spent
hours putting the seven pieces together to solve the different
puzzles shown in the booklet that came with the puzzle, and many
hours creating my own designs. The cache name comes from a
television commercial featuring Henry Gibson of Laugh-In fame. The
announcer asks him if he knows how to make all the different
designs, and he replies, "Soma do, soma don't!"
To solve this puzzle, you'll need to go to this page, click on
the PDF icon in the lower left, then print the PDF file. I
recommend printing it on card stock. You'll then need to cut each
figure out along the dark lines, being careful not to cut off the
tabs. Also cut into the figures along the dark lines, but not
beyond. Do not cut on red lines! Fold along the dotted lines at a
90° angle, then fold and glue the tabs to make the figures shown on
the Wikipedia
page. I've numbered my figures to match the ones on the Wikipedia
page from top to bottom. Make sure you fold and glue carefully.
NOTE: The PDF figures are designed to fit on the Block by
Block puzzle by Binary Arts, available online or at certain book
stores. This in no way should imply an endorsement of any
commercial product or place of business. I merely state this as an
aid in solving the puzzle. Alternately, you can get twenty-seven
3/4" blocks of wood and glue them together to form the seven
pieces, then overlay the printed puzzle pieces.
Once you have all seven blocks put together, you will need to
connect them to form a 3x3 cube. Here's where the four-star rating
comes in: There are 240 distinct ways to form these pieces into a
cube. When you consider rotation and reflection, that creates over
one MILLION ways to assemble these into a cube! To get the location
of the cache, you'll need to find that one in a million way to get
the key to the coordinates. To make it a bit simpler, when the
blocks are correctly assembled, you should be able to take one
piece, flip it 180° and put it on top of the cube to make this
design:
You'll find it quite revealing.
The cache is at N 40° 43.ABC W 111° 47.DEF. From the cache
location you can see two homes to the northwest that look like the
architect took inspiration from this puzzle (it's even more
pronounced when viewing from GCHYJ9, Peak Above Beany Babies)
Congrats to GotWings for the FTF! Bonus points for cutting up
all those blocks and building your own puzzle. Well done!
You can check your solution by clicking on the image:
