36 Cube is the World's Most Challenging Puzzle, a crazy 3D Sudoku

ASTRA Best Toy for Kids List – 2009
Parents’ Choice Gold Award – 2009
iParenting Media Awards Best Products of 2009

The 36 Cube is a 3D sudoku puzzle that consists of a gray base that looks like a city skyline and 36 colored towers. The towers come in six different colors and six different heights. Your mission – should you accept it – is to place all the towers onto the base and form a level cube with each of the six colors appearing once and only once in each row and column.

It seems simple until you get 34 of the 36 towers placed and then realize you’ve done something wrong and have to start all over again. What’s even more unnerving – you can’t solve this puzzle by writing a computer program to do the logic for you. You’ll have to rely on your own brain, nerds. Good luck.

Our copywriter monkey will admit she both loves and hates puzzles. She enjoys figuring things out and the vast sense of accomplishment when a puzzle is defeated, but if she can’t figure something out she’ll throw a mental tantrum and lose sleep for weeks. Srsly, she’ll have dreams about the puzzle and come in to work looking like a pink-haired zombie. If you are like her, the 36 Cube is not for you. You will probably lose sleep, friends, family, your job, and your house in the attempt to figure it out.

  • WARNING: Choking hazard. Contains small parts. Not for children under the age of 3
  • Crazy near-impossible puzzle game is like 3D Sudoku
  • Invented by Dr. Derrick Niederman of MIT
  • Based on Euler’s 36 officer problem
  • Ages 8 and up, single player (but nobody’s stopping you from helping!)
  • 36 blocks to play in 6 varying heights and 6 colors
  • Win by placing all 36 pieces correctly following just two rules:
    • There must be only one of each colored tower in each row and column
    • The towers must fit into the base to form a perfectly smooth cube
  • It seems easy at first but is really, really hard to win!
  • Math teachers love having this logic game in the classroom
  • Package Size: 6.7 x 4.9 x 6.7 inches


Buy 36 Cube – World’s Most Challenging Puzzle here