Soma cube Soma cube The Soma cube is a solid dissection puzzle invented by Piet Hein in 1933 during a lecture on quantum mechanics conducted by Werner Heisenberg. Its name is alleged to be derived from the fictitious drug "soma" consumed as a pastime by the establishment in Aldous Huxley's dystopic novel "Brave New World". Seven pieces made out of unit cubes must be assembled into a 3×3×3 cube. The pieces can also be used to make a variety of other 3D shapes. The pieces of the Soma cube consist of all possible combinations of three or four unit cubes, joined at
Floppy Cube 4); this means they can now be permutated in 12!/(12-4)! different ways. The corners still cannot be flipped; their orientation continues to be fully dependent on their position. All of these positions are attainable: there is no parity constraint, regardless of whether the edge pieces can twist on their own or not. The full number is therefore: This number is significantly larger than the number of combinations on the Floppy Cube. The God's Number for this puzzle is also considerably larger than that of the Floppy Cube: 13 (when edges can twist on their own) or 15 (when they cannot).