Puzzle #3: Calendar Cubes
Two cubes, each with a single digit between 0 and 9 printed on each face, can be arranged in a holder to display any day of the month as a two-digit number (e.g., 25 on Christmas or 04 on American Independence Day). How do these work? If you were tasked with designing two cubes capable of showing 01, 02, 03, …, 30, 31, how would you assign digits to their faces? This might not seem puzzling, until you set out to try. Remember that cubes only have six faces, so you have 12 total spaces to work with.
If you solve this and crave an additional challenge, how would you represent the three-letter month abbreviations (e.g. ‘jan’, ‘feb’, ‘mar’, and so on) with three cubes, in which each face contains a lowercase letter? Solve the numeric problem first. The same trick will come in handy if you attempt the more difficult letter version.
Find the solution at the bottom of this page.
