Soma cube. The pieces of a Soma cube (with extra coloring) The same puzzle, assembled into a cube One of the possible ways of assembling the Soma cube Soma has been discussed in detail by Martin Gardner and John Horton Conway, and the book Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays contains a detailed analysis of the Soma cube problem. There are 240 distinct solutions of the Soma cube puzzle, excluding rotations and reflections: these are easily generated by a simple recursive backtracking search computer program similar to that used for the eight queens puzzle. The seven Soma pieces are six polycubes of order four and one of order three: Trivia[edit] Similar to Soma cube is the 3D pentomino puzzle, which can fill boxes of 2×3×10, 2×5×6 and 3×4×5 units.
Solving the Soma cube has been used by as a task to measure individuals' performance and effort in a series of psychology experiments. In each of the 240 solutions to the cube puzzle, there is only one place that the "T" piece can be placed. See also[edit] Un autre ''cube'' en bois. Pentominos. Paper Models of Polyhedra.