The name tesseract was coined in the 19th century and many theories abound. Basically it is a hypercube - a cube of more than three dimensions. The tesseract then is to the cube as the cube is to the square. An unfolded paper cube creates a 6 squared shape. Raising each square to cubes and then raising the central cube in each direction gives a 3D shape comprised of 8 cubes. With each cube constructed of 8 sub-cubes, a very interesting puzzle of 12 pieces using 64 sub-cubes is certainly possible.

I had toyed with this idea years ago with the cube and checkerboard puzzle, now known as the CalmPlex MindBlock^TM. The nearest I could assemble was that flying apparition.

The name of the puzzle back then was Tesserec and I thought it quite appropriate to use that name again for this puzzle - akin to the rising of the Phoenix ;-)

The 12 pieces of the NEW TessErec^TM can form an 8x8 square and a 4x4x4 cube which means that all 12 pieces are flat and no piece has a greater dimension exceeding 4 unit cubes.

How is it made to stand freely you then ask? Weight and Friction are the key elements. Although there are many ways to put the shape together, there are only two solutions that allow the puzzle to stand freely - all others collapse.

This puzzle should be offered to any aspiring student engineer.

Many in my marketing trial tests have completed the shape but none have made it free standing - it simply crashes when the construction support legs are removed!

Addendum - my daughter's fiance, an engineering student in his final year at the U of A completed the task - drove through a blinding snowstorm to show me ... Now that gets 'brownie' points ... ;-)