A Note on "Instant Insanity."

Thomas A. Brown

Expert InsightsPublished 1968

A brief analysis of the "Instant Insanity" puzzle, now available in toy stores, and a method of analyzing such puzzles for solution or redesign. The puzzle consists of four multicolored cubes. Each cube can be given 24 orientations and the four can be arranged into 82,944 possible rectangular prisms--not counting permutations of the order of the cubes, or rotation about the axis--yet only two arrangements satisfy the conditions. A solution is presented in terms of assigning each color a number and letting the characteristic number of a set be the product of the integers corresponding to their colors. Comparison of the 9 possible products of the top and bottom of cubes I and II with those of III and IV identifies the solution. Three other cube puzzles are outlined. 10 pp.

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Brown, Thomas A., A Note on "Instant Insanity.". Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1968. https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3689.html.
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