For a very long time I was amazed by Tim Browne's "Create the Double Cube". And after doing the Magic Dino Cube in June 2006, I wanted to extend the idea! The "Double Create the Cube" magic was done so well done by Tim, it is hard to be more creative than that for that specific puzzle with two cubes.

Then I was thinking of making a magic with more cubes. A three cube magic was indeed possible, but special care should been taken in order to make sure the same side covers an external (or internal) part. Because those three cubes interact in more ways than you may think and the design becomes more complex.

And I always had in my mind the image of a flyer of the 80s video game Q-bert, where the cute orange hero (i.e. Q-Bert) is standing on those cubes.

Anyway, I present this new magic I made, called "MagiQ-Bert"!

It has two solutions,

(1) Flat solution, which shows a nice screenshot of the video game (all graphics were taken from the original game using the fantastic MAME emulator)
(2) Triple Cube solution. Here, the one side shows the three cubes with yellow color on the top, and on the other side, it shows the three cubes with blue color on the top.
(this is because in the game, the color is yellow, until Q-bert steps on it and becomes blue, i.e. the goal of the first level of the game is to make them all blue - there are more levels, but this is the most well known level).

For the cubes solution, I did not place oriented tiles (just like I did with the Magic Dino Cube), because simply, it is more confusing without them! I deliberately placed them in a completely random order, making it extremely difficult puzzle to solve even by *knowing* the solution! Had I placed orientation, there would be some clues to solve it, which I did not want to give. ;-)
(In fact, I spent more time trying to put it in the triple cube solution form than I did for stringing it!!!)

At the first picture above the flat solution may be seen. Below is the cubic solution. Both sides are shown.

Front side of the Triple Cube solution (yellow on top, light green on the bottom left, dark green on the bottom right)
Back side of the Triple Cube solution (blue on top, light green on the bottom left, dark green on the bottom right)
Both triple cube sides can stand on their own as the weight is nicely balanced.