How to make the origami Diabolical Cube Puzzle
Designed by Jo Nakashima (09/2019)
Difficulty level: simple
The origami Diabolical Cube is a puzzle similar to the SOMA Cube. It consists of six different pieces that can be assembled into a 3x3x3 cube. According to Wikipedia, it appears to be the oldest puzzle of this type, first appearing in an 1893 book Puzzles Old and New by Professor Hoffmann.
The puzzle has 13 different solutions, if mirrored pairs of solutions are not counted as being distinct from each other.
The origami is pretty easy to make and it only uses the basic cube unit and connections like in the origami Tetris Blocks.
Paper
In this tutorial I’m using 12cm x 12cm origami paper per cube (27 cubes in total).
Helpful videos
To make the Diabolical Cube Puzzle you’ll need to fold a 5×5 grid on every sheet of paper that you’ll use. In the tutorial I show the “origami way” to do that, without a ruler or any kind of tool. However, there are easier methods and the videos below can help you in this task: