Octagonal Prism Puzzle

Description:

This puzzle is a version of a Rubik’s Cube with twelve of the small cubes making up the Rubik’s Cube cut in half so the resulting shape is an octagonal prism, a solid with ten faces, two parallel octagons that are connected by eight rectangles. There are several names for this puzzle: Octagonal Prism Puzzle, Magic Octagonal Prism, The Barrel, and The Octagon.

In the solved position four of the rectangles connecting the octagons are made up of three small squares (gray, turquoise, green and dark blue) that correspond to center rows of the Rubik’s Cube. The other four rectangles are made up of three rectangles (orange, pink, yellow, or purple) with one dimension the edge of the small square and the other the diagonal of that square. The two octagonal faces are red and white.

Although there are slightly fewer possible arrangements of the individual pieces that for the Rubik’s Cube, there are situations that can occur that cannot occur while solving the Rubik’s Cube, making the solution somewhat more complicated

This puzzle was made in about 1981. It is among Rubik’s Cube related items from the Cube Museum, which operated in Grand Junction, Colorado, from 1988 to 1991. For more information about the Rubik’s Cube and other twisting puzzles that use the same or similar mechanisms see 1987.0805.01.