The 3×3×3 grid is a crossword puzzle in which every square cubelet receives two letters, giving 6 letters per entry which are made up of two three-letter words (or abbreviations). For example, 1A is entered as MA / SC / AL.
Several of the clues are reasonably guessable or googlable. Once some clues have been filled in, we find out through googling that the two-letter codes we've been filling into the cube are in fact the official abbreviations of the 27 Federative units of Brazil. That allows us to fill in the rest of the cube.
Individual clue answers are as follows:
| Across | 1 | Female progenitors; food energy unit (abbr.) | MAS; CAL |
| 4 | Best; preceding our calendar (abbr.) | TOP; BCE | |
| 9 | Golf score; students not about to graduate (abbr.) | PAR; JRS | |
| 10 | Film studio (abbr.); Tic-___-toe | MGM; TAC | |
| 11 | German soccer body (abbr.); software "glue" (abbr.) | DFB; API | |
| 14 | Before (prefix); texting (abbr.) | PRE; SMS | |
| 15 | Body of water; atlas page | SEA; MAP | |
| Down | 1 | Yoga surface; defenceman Bobby | MAT; ORR |
| 2 | Collaboratively-written foundation; dude | SCP; BRO | |
| 3 | Intoxicating substance (abbr.); in particular (abbr.) | ALC; ESP | |
| 7 | US Republicans (abbr.); "One man, one engine" manufacturer (abbr.) | GOP; AMG | |
| 8 | Each; pouch | PER; SAC | |
| 12 | Sweetheart; science podcaster Harris | BAE; SAM | |
| 13 | Uninhabited island east of Ellesmere; plant goo | PIM; SAP | |
| Toward | 2 | Display preserver (file ext.); US league | SCR; NBA |
| 3 | Mountain peak; prefix meaning "over" | ALP; EPI | |
| 5 | Fixed storage (abbr.); Scottish topper | ROM; TAM | |
| 6 | Resort; maximum | SPA; CAP |
Now we simply replace the 2-letter codes with the full names of the regions and use the indicated numbers (in order from top to bottom) to index into them:
| Code | Region name | Index | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| RO | RONDONIA | 7 | I |
| ES | ESPIRITOSANTO | 7 | T |
| GO | GOIAS | 5 | S |
| RJ | RIODEJANEIRO | 6 | J |
| PE | PERNAMBUCO | 8 | U |
| SP | SAOPAULO | 7 | L |
| SE | SERGIPE | 5 | I |
| PI | PIAUI | 4 | U |
| MG | MINASGERAIS | 5 | S |
| AC | ACRE | 4 | E |
| AL | ALAGOAS | 2 | L |
| CE | CEARA | 2 | E |
| SC | SANTACATARINA | 6 | C |
| MT | MATOGROSSO | 3 | T |
| PR | PARANA | 3 | R |
| AM | AMAZONAS | 5 | O |
| TO | TOCANTINS | 3 | C |
| BA | BAHIA | 3 | H |
| RN | RIOGRANDEDONORTE | 9 | E |
| MA | MARANHAO | 1 | M |
| DF | DISTRITOFEDERAL | 9 | F |
| RR | RORAIMA | 2 | O |
| PA | PARA | 3 | R |
| AP | AMAPA | 2 | M |
| MS | MATOGROSSODOSUL | 14 | U |
| RS | RIOGRANDEDOSUL | 14 | L |
| PB | PARAIBA | 2 | A |
The cluephrase IT'S JULIUS ELECTROCHEM FORMULA appears. We are looking for a formula named after a guy named Julius that deals with electrochemistry. A search engine of our preference will perhaps find a couple Wikipedia articles, but only one of them will mention a Julius, namely: TAFEL EQUATION.
It all started when I randomly came across a list of the Brazilian federative units and noticed that there are 27 of them (3 cubed). I wanted to make a 3D puzzle based on that. However, for a long time I figured making it a 3D crossword was impossible because you couldn't form enough 6-letter words out of the state abbreviations. I ran an algorithm on this and although I was surprised at the number of viable 6-letter words that came out (such as PASCAL, or BARNES as in "Barnes & Noble"), it was still not enough to make a crossword in which every cubelet is clued (or every but one: you could conceivably leave one cubelet unclued because once the solver realizes the bigrams are a well-defined set, they can fill in the missing one).
So the real breakthrough was to realize that I can break it up into pairs of 3-letter words. This got me a lot further towards a viable crossword. I still tried to include as many 6-letter words as possible but ended up with only one "real" word (PASCAL) and two "fantasy" words clued weirdly (PRE-SMS: "before the advent of texting", and SEA MAP: "chart of water routes"). The hunt construction team (rightly) deemed this inelegant and we decided to redo the fill aiming exclusively for 3-letter words only.
The JavaScript code that animates the cube does not use any web technologies for 3D graphics. It does all of the calculations (projecting 3D points onto a camera) by hand. I wrote that code a long time ago just for the fun of it and decided to reuse it here.
(Tech team's note: I am scared and confused, send help. Code was lightly modified to fit it into React.)