Can I Add Up?

I Can With The Help Of Gorgeous Wood!

Cubic Fusion by Juno

I just cannot resist 2 things - beautiful wood and recreational mathematics. Oh ok, make that 4 things - I need to add puzzles (almost all of them) and cats as well. It would also appear that cats appreciate wood and puzzles as well:

Amenadiel and Mazikeen love wooden puzzles too!

A week or so ago, Juno announced the availability of his latest creation and I ordered it straight away. It flew all the way around the world faster than post usually goes from one length of the UK to the other! I received it and admired the fabulous woods that I asked for - just look at the grain on the box and on the Zebrano block:

My goodness it is so beautiful!
Camphor Laurel box with Zebrano, Silky Oak, and New Guinea Walnut blocks

The box has a 6x6x6 cavity, the small block is 3x3x3 and the larger blocks can be simultaneously assembled into a 4x4x4 and a 5x5x5 cube.

It will be a nice practical geometric proof that

3x3x3 + 4x4x4 + 5x5x5 = 6x6x6

if you can assemble all the shapes inside the box.

It's not terribly hard to do but it is very satisfying. Having solved it in about 20 minutes, I put the shapes into Burrtools which told me that there were only 2 solutions (both having 2 pieces that could be switched). It is very satisfying to see the arithmetical result displayed geometrically like that. Juno seems to think that most puzzlers might take about an hour to assemble the big cube. This would make it the perfect puzzle for newbies as well as us old hands. I will be taking this to work for a week or so to see what my colleagues think of it. It will then look glorious on display. Thank you Juno.

It is still available from Pluredro just now. You even get to choose which type of grain you would like for the box.

Update:

Having written my blog post and published it, I decided to solve it again so that I could pack it up to take to work. OMG! I retract the statement that it's not terribly hard! I cannot seem to solve it a second time. I must have gotten lucky the first time - this will be fun to show colleagues.