CAT Logical Reasoning | An Intriguing LR Puzzle4 min read

Here is a rather curious LR Puzzle. Have a crack at it before checking out the detailed solution given below. Happy Solving! You might also want to check out this wonderful article about Time Management and DILR!

LR Puzzle – Question

Did you have fun solving this? Check out this Detailed Explanation!

We have been provided with a cube of dimensions 6*8*5, with the faces coloured blue, green and red. The 8*6 surfaces are painted red and the 6*5 surfaces are painted blue. So, the middle 8%5 should have been painted green. In total the cubic units are 240 in number.

Before we go into the solutions, let us define a few terms

1. Firstly, the cuboid has six surfaces. For the purpose of this question, imagine the room you are in to be the cuboid. The cuboid has 3 pairs of rectangular surfaces around it
2. Secondly, there are totally 8 * 6 * 5 = 240 smaller cubes that constitute this larger cuboid.
3. Thirdly, we are going to take a count of the different parts of this cuboid.
   • The cuboid has 6 surfaces
   • It has 8 corners. Let us call these as 8 vertices
   • It has 12 straight lines – 4 on the top surface, 4 on the bottom surface and 4 that look like pillars between these two surfaces. Let us call these as “Edges”
   • Finally, it has 240 small cubes sitting inside.

Question 1) How many of the smaller cubes have none of their sides painted?

We are tasked with the determination of the number of colourless cubes; to do this mandates the realization that any cube with at least one face exposed is coloured; thus only cubes hidden from view have to be considered.

The cuboid thus consists of a colourless core and a coloured periphery. The easiest way to do this problem is to understand that the colourless core is itself a cuboid, the dimensions of which are determined by deducting 2 from each of those of the original cuboid enclosing it, this being done to discount the cubes that are exposed, as might be clear from the illustration given below.

Thus, the number of uncoloured cubes is 4*6*3 = 72. This is the answer to the first question.

Question 2) How many have exactly 2 sides painted?

We have to consider only edge cubes that are not corner cubes—corner cubes have three faces painted—and this is done best by considering one edge at a time from the total of twelve.

There are four edges of length 5; these have but 3 cubes each that are not corner cubes as each edge connects two corners.

There are four edges of length 6; these have but 4 cubes each that are not corner cubes.

There are four edges of length 8; these have but 6 cubes each that are not corner cubes.

Thus, the total number of cubes having two faces painted in the second category is 4 times the sum of 3, 4 and 6, which is 52. 4* ( 3 + 4 + 6) = 52.

Question 3) How many more cubes have red paint as one of their surfaces than the number of ones that have blue paint on them?”

This is easily tackled, as all that is required is the difference between the number of cubes with at least one side red and the number of those with at least one side blue.

For red we have 6*8 + 6*8 = 96.

For blue we have 6*5 + 6*5 = 60.

The difference is thus 36.

The answers are thus, 72, 52 and 36 for the three questions, respectively. I hope you enjoyed solving this LR Puzzle as much as I did!

Happy Learning and Best Wishes for CAT 2020!

Rajesh Balasubramanian takes the CAT every year and is a 4-time CAT 100 percentiler. He likes few things more than teaching Math and insists to this day that he is a better teacher than exam-taker.