Design by Piet Hein

The Soma cube is discovered by Piet Hein during a dull symposium. He drew several combinations of cubes and discovered that if you take all possible combinations of three or four cubes in which always at least one ankle must be, you get seven pieces with a total of 27 cubes. You have six pieces made by four cubes and one piece made by three cubes. The 27 cubes can fill a greater cube of 3 x 3 x 3 blocks. So that's the reason this puzzle is called a Soma cube. The name Soma is derived from the drug 'Soma' in the book 'Brave new world' written by Aldous Huxley. To make a cube using the seven pieces is not very difficult, but you can make much more shapes just like with the Tangram puzzle, but now in 3D.

Beneath are shown the seven pieces and indicated by a letter. You can saw the pieces out of a wooden plate of triplex, but the puzzle looks better if you take a square stick and saw 27 cubes. Glue the cubes together according to the diagram below. In stead of wooden blocks you can also take cubes made of metal or even dices. Important is that you use a strong type of glue.

 

You can make several shapes with the seven pieces. Below some examples are given. with a little bit fantasy you can see figures in the shapes as a gate, stairs or a snake. Go to he solution page if you can't solve these tasks.