You might have heard of the puzzle of slicing a 3cm x 3cm x 3cm cube into 27 1cm cubes, and how, even if you are allowed to rearrange the pieces between cuts, it still takes a minimum of six cuts to perform this action. There is a very clever argument that proves it.
Now consider a 4cm x 4cm x 4cm cube, cut into 64 1cm cubes. If you aren’t allowed to rearrange the pieces, will take nine cuts as shown below.
The question is: in the 4x4x4 case, with how few cuts can we slice it into 64 cm cubes if we ARE allowed to rearrange the pieces between cuts?