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Sudoku Dino Cube
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A sudoku variant of the classic Dino cube with a surprising constraint.

This is an additional colour scheme for the Dino cube that can be achieved through piece-swapping of two donating Dino cubes. The solution requires that all four colours appear once on each face.

The classic Dino cube puzzle came in three colour schemes:
1. Six colours with each edge piece different and carrying two colours, with two solutions one with red/white/blue clockwise around a corner, the other "inside out" with a reversed order.
2. Two colours with two pieces with dual colour and the rest either in one colour or the other colour and a single solution.
3. Four colours with three edge pieces of each colour on both sides and two solutions - single colour around four corners or a "harlequin" pattern where each face shows all four colours in a different permutation.

This puzzle is a fourth scheme, in four colours but each piece carrying one of the twelve pair-combinations of colours and these are laid out so each face has a different permutation of the four colours, similar to the "harlequin" solution of the standard four-colour Dino and following the principle of other "sudoku" cube puzzles.

This colour scheme is disorienting and surprising can lead to a situation where the puzzle appears solved except for two swapped pieces. The same problem occurs on the related 'Brain Twist' puzzle and indicates that the puzzle is "inside out" and must be solved from scratch. The geometry of the puzzle means that while there are two of each colour pair their 'cis' and 'trans' orientation cannot be changed.

As such, this is a small level of complexity higher than the 6 colour Dino Cube and forms part of the inventor's exploration of puzzles that gradually increase the difficulty for novices.

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Thank you to the following people for their assistance in helping collect the information on this page: Mark Lodge.

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