O'Beirne's Cube Puzzle

thingiverse

This puzzle has been around for ages - often praised - search for O'Beirne's cube to view references. It consists of six distinct pieces, forming a cube as well as five rectangular solids. The cube measures 12x12x12, yielding a volume of 1728 units, and each piece boasts a volume of 288 units. Multiplying the number of pieces by their volume gives us 6 x 288 = 1728. The rectangular solids have dimensions of 16x18x6, 16x12x9, 12x24x6, 8x24x9, and 8x18x12. Three mirror image pairs make up the six pieces - here the "a" pieces are colored red, the "b" pieces gray, and the "c" pieces yellow. A stepwise relationship exists between the solutions that this coloring clarifies. The pieces can be easily and quickly printed out. OpenSCAD code demonstrating the solutions is included.