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
Minus Cube to fall into the space. The goal of the puzzle is to shuffle the cubes in such a way that on each side of the box, all of the faces of the small cubes are one color. There were two types of Minus Cubes manufactured: the so-called "Moscow Minus Cube" (red-white) and "Sverdlovsk Minus Cube" (blue-white), each named after the cities in which they were produced. They differed only in the orientation of one of the small cubes. Because of this difference there are 12 times as many "solved" arrangements for the Moscow Minus Cube, and thus the Sverdlovsk Minus