Word: cubed
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Chips off the old cube...
Worldwide sales of the original Rubik's Cube, the six-sided brainteaser invented by ErnÖ Rubik, a Hungarian professor of architecture, have now passed the 10 million mark. Moreover, the perplexing puzzle has spawned a bountiful and profitable array of sequels, spin-offs and solution manuals that is turning into a minor industry...
...Britain, for example, the royal wedding inspired an imitation cube that shows the Union Jack on four sides and the likenesses of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, on the other two. Because of its pictures, the royal cube is even tougher to solve than its Hungarian predecessor. While Rubik's Cube has a mere 43.2 quintillion (432 followed by 17 zeros) possible arrangements, the new British version has 88.6 sextillion (886 followed by 20 zeros) permutations...
Rubik also has come out with Son of Cube, a three-dimensional twister called the Magic Snake, which can assume the shape of a swan, saxophone or steamroller. F.A.O. Schwarz, New York City's premier toy store, sold out its initial shipment of 864 Snakes in a week. Copy-cubers have devised multicolored variations of Rubik's baffler in the shape of pyramids, octagons and cylinders. A new puzzle marketed in France called the Tower of Babel has sold 600,000 copies in three months at a price of about...
...world arms bazaar is a Rubik's Cube of complex and shifting relationships and one of the world's largest businesses; last year weapons transfers amounted to perhaps $120 billion.* Weapons are indisputably a growth industry...