Talk:Cube (1997 film)

Portal
Anyone else reminded of Portal with this movie or vice-versa? Obviously there's no portals in it but they both feature people kidnapped and put through some kind of mysterious test underground against their will. May or may not factor into the article, but I wouldn't be suprised if The Cube didn't influence Portal in some way.75.141.234.236 (talk) 07:44, 2 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes this does remind me of portal but please do not use the Wikipedia discussion page to talk about it. This page was meant to be used to discuss possible changes to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ross817 (talk • contribs) 21:13, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Comic Reference.
Nothing important but i belive [This] is a blatant reference to kazan. If somone could at it that would be great.

Merge summary of other movies
Added notes on the two sequels that they should be merged with this one. Cube Zero has an excellent synopsis of all three movies. Zerbey 19:00, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * This article has a synopsis of the first movie. Cube Zero perhaps should be moved to Cube (trilogy) or something, since the first movie was never called "Cube Zero". Dysprosia 00:44, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I've created a new Cube series article that has the summaries of all three movies. I went with that name instead because of the naming of The Matrix series article. -- Bovineone 07:26, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Alderson
I have noticed that one of the mentioned cast members - "Julian Richings as Alderson" is not mentioned anywhere else on the page. Is this a minor character?--Brendan Hide 21:31, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * He never got a line, and died about twenty seconds into the film (in the "sushi machine" mentioned). Kinitawowi 13:00, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
 * Alderson is not killed by the sushi machine, you'll notice that the sushi machine works and appears differently. It traps the victim within a circle of wires and then collapses towards the floor by tightening the wires. This should mean that instead of being cubed, the victim is sliced into "cake" pieces. --Gencoil 01:18, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
 * he's mentioned as "unnamed character" in the plot description though, not sure how to fix that (clem 23:16, 26 August 2005 (UTC))
 * I added a bit to the Alderson section--speculation on what his "function" in the group might have been had he survived. He is one of the most intriguing characters precisely because his presence in the Cube remains unexplained.(Smoky Topaz 8:39, 11 November 2005 (UTC))
 * Is he not "unnamed" because we can see his name tag on his jacket? Dikke poes 17:23, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Purpose of the Cube
No discussion of the allegorical significance that the Cube was deisgned by its victims, so added: "However, Worth's role as being a designer of the cube system albeit without any real knowledge of the task he had been working on, other than it was a 'good job' at the time, and his argument against the conspiracy theory of Holloway, argues for the film's allegorical point being that we are all trapped in a device of our own making, which was made in ignorance, and ultimately meaningless, however complex and intricate at may appear." User:User


 * The character Worth claims he worked on the outer part and no one involved on the project knew anything about the overall purpose of the rooms in the cube. Of course he could simply have been driven mad as happened to Quentin in the course of the movie. The movie is a perfect analog of a bureaucracy gone amok. Franz Kafka would have been proud. There is no explained purpose in the movie, and it works best as a complete mystery: the explanations in the sequal and prequel fall flat. In Cube all we know is the people are in a maze, with traps and few clues, but must survive by their wits and grudging cooperation. To be encyclopediac, there is no real purpose given in the movie, but in the end it is ironic that only the idiot survives. For talk purposes, if I had to surmise, the cube started as a top secret secure weapons storage depot, automated; when the project was canceled, the cube went on automatically and no one outside knew enough about the project to have an overview of what they had created and abandoned (par for gov't work). It also reminds me of the Algis Budrys novel Rogue Moon. q.v. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_Moon Naaman Brown (talk) 00:08, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Clean Up
This article needs some serious work, in almost every section. I think there should be a section about the Allegorical Meaning of the cube, as well as much more cohesive Maths section. I say this because I think Cube is a excellent film and it deserves a better article than this. Satchfan 08:14, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Cleaned a bit --dvorak.typist


 * There should certainly NOT contain a section about allegorical meanings, as that would constitute original research. Surely the film has a fan site where discussions of that nature are appropriate and encouraged.Vonbontee (talk) 07:49, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

rooms
I dont get how this person got that the rooms are 15.5 feet, and not 14 feet.

Rooms
You have to add the extra legnth from when you go into the door which is roughly a foot and a half. That is how the external dimensions are 15.5 feet.

But that's still wrong. That's an extra 1.5 feet on the other side of the cube. You forgot that each door has an opposite door on the other side, so that would add another 1.5 feet to the exterior lenght of one of cubes;

The Math: 14ft (interior) + 1.5ft (doorway) + 1.5ft (opposite doorway) = 17ft^3 (exterior)

That is, of course, assuming that the lenght of doorway on a cube is 1.5ft. I actually think it's 2ft, but that's just me.--24.89.215.104 04:22, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

You're more right than I am, but we are both wrong. It is said by Worth in the film that outter shell is 434ft on one side, and Leaven deduces after pacing off the room that the number of cubes on a side within the outter shell is 26. 26 cubes high, 26 cubes wide, and 26 cubes long.

So, some more math: 434ft / 26 = 16.69ft(rounded exterior dimensions) - 14ft(interior dimensions) = 2.69ft(rounded)

It's this 2.69ft left over that when divided in by 2 (for both sides of the cube) gives us 1.34ft(rounded). That 1.34ft is the lenght of half the "hallway" between one cube, since a "hallway" is created between any 2 cubes lining up to on another.

Math was never my best, so if anyone can point out what's wrong, then by all means...

--24.89.215.104 04:42, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * However, you have to account for the fact that two adjaccent rooms share their common "hallway", i.e. every room only contributes one half, making the hallway 2.69 ft long, which is, IMHO, not too different from the length perceived when watching the movie.

Umm...the "hallway" lenght was already stated. --24.89.215.104 00:27, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

-The math on dimensions does not consider the 'border space', the empty space between the rooms of the cube and the outer shell. The assumption was made in the movie that either side of the rooms has a space equal to the size of one room. Therefore 26 rooms + 2 border space = 28 434ftt/28rooms=15.5ft/room That allows a 14 foot interior (as mentioned) and 0.75 feet for the thickness of the wall. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.114.37.173 (talk) 20:55, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

The comment prior to this is correct. The dimensions of the cube are 26 by 26 by 26 with a border of two rooms on each side. Each border space can be deduced to be the size of one side of a cube as in one of the last scenes, a 'bridge cube' connecting the outer shell to the cube is seen to be sliding along the perimeter of the cube. This also makes sense because 434 is perfectly divisible by 28 and Leaven's theory on the size of the cube was made before they reached the edge the first time round. Hence, no border was considered or she was more concerned with the internal size of the cube and felt that the 'border space' was not worth mentioning to the others. Therefore, the cube dimensions I worked out are as follows:


 * External dimension of a cube room: 15.5 ft = 434 ft / (26+2)
 * Internal dimension of a cube room: 14 ft
 * One half of a doorway of a cube on both sides: 1.5 ft = 15.5 ft - 14 ft
 * One half of a doorway (each cube contributes to one half): 1.5 ft / 2 = 0.75 ft
 * Size of doorway between two cubes: 1.5 ft = 0.75 ft x 2
 * Dimensions of the outer shell: 434 ft by 434 ft by 434 ft
 * Dimensions of the cube: Maximum of 26 cube rooms by 26 cube rooms by 26 cube rooms (There are empty spaces within the cube and these are unable to be calculated given the limited details of the cube.)

The most convincing part of the figures (to me) above is that they are all exact and not rounded. Mysterial 15:22, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Post-apocalyptic science fiction film
is it? How do we know this?

--Charlesknight 22:53, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

No dialouge in the film suggests that there was any major global conflict outside the cube and the state of global affairs are never addressed. This leads the viewer to assume that the events in the film could have happen at anytime and are not hinged upon a post-apoc world. So...no; Cube is not a post-apocalyptic sci-fi film.

Changed where the "Spoilers End"
Spoliers End tag was after the synopsis, and then was followed by what happens at the very end of the film in the Character details. I moved the tag to the end of the Character section.

Sure

The Traps
There were some minor areas that needed better wording in the the trap explanation. The unknown trap was left out but is very important as this trap establishes that their are multiple types of sensors throughout the cube.

Kazan and Rennes
Holloway, San Quentin and Leavenworth are known to me, but Kazan and Rennes? The latter's known to me as one of the former national capital of Britanny, and the other for its university where Tolstoy went. Can someone provide ref.s for the prisons in these places and how notable they are please? --MacRusgail (talk) 19:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Surely it is 'Leaven deduces' & not 'Leaven deducts'? (82.22.162.83 (talk) 20:06, 30 January 2008 (UTC))

Math Corrections
The article claimed the math was all valid but it has some holes. Also, people think trapped rooms are marked by prime powers, they're not, Leaven was saying they're involved; the trapped rooms are those in which any of the number of prime factors of the marked numbers it not a power of a prime (check the film carefully). I believe Leaven's claim of using the subtractions to figure out how the rooms rearrange is impossible, but I'm not sure so I can't comment on it. 70 bags of gumdrops if you can figure out what the theory is!

I've checked the film carefully, and Leaven's exact words are, "they're identified by numbers that are the power of a prime." That means trapped rooms are identified by prime powers, so the article is correct in its current form. Tiggerdude (talk) 15:38, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but she doesn't say _how_ a prime power identifies it. Note she doesn't say "If any of the numbers are a prime power, then the room is trapped." All she says is "identified," that is, "identified [in some manner]." Your social security number, minus one, identifies you, if you know to add one. She's not going to say on the fly, "they're identified by prime powers if you do [such and such] a mathematical procedure I've figured out." If this phrase was all the evidence on this issue that exists in the movie, I would agree that your analysis is the best induction of what marks a trapped room. But she says very soon after your quote, "I'd have to calculate the factors in each set." Clearly she's not going with the simple theory that a prime power marks a trapped room, or she wouldn't desperately needs Kazaan's help.

Then she starts asking Kazaan for the prime *factors* of each of the numbers. If they're identified as you say, then why bother with prime factors? She would just ask Kazaan, "is this number a prime power or not." There's a more complex system going on that's not being directly stated, and if you examine it, I believe you'll find my analysis holds. I have certain theories on my math page that I wouldn't try to insert here because they're guesses. For the corrections I've made here, unless I've made an error or oversight in examining the movie (no one's bothered to examine my math), I'm pretty close to totally sure that my analysis that the trapped rooms are identified if the number of prime factors of any of the three digit numbers on the room tags is not a prime power, fits all the dialogue and evidence of the movie, and is the simplest explanation.

I'm very willing to another opinion, but to my knowledge, no one has ever bothered to come up with a theory, other than simply quoting the phrase you're quoting with no examination of what exactly it means or why your theory doesn't fit the facts. Of course it's "unverified," but the only guy who can truly "verify" it is the professor who did the math for the movie! Otherwise, the only thing anyone ever *can* post about the movie, is educated speculation. Maybe a math professor or MIT student would have more official credibility at an analysis than an egotistical ramanujan-wannabe artist =), but no one's ever bothered to examine it and make an educated theory, as far as I know anyway. I'm quite open to correction.  If you don't think my math is strong enough or valid enough to insert as educated speculation, then please examine it on squish7.com/cube and tell me where I'm in error; I'll be very happy to listen.

Squish7 (talk) 04:24, 28 Feburary 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.237.228.76 (talk)

I've put a detailed page up with everything I examined; click my name (user page), main site, cube, if you're bored.

Squish7 (talk) 08:17, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Someone corrected me with what I'm pretty sure were two incorrect statements. The point made that may have made sense is that if we're talking about the number of unique prime factors, then this number is limited to four (2*3*5*7, because *9 is over 999), but I believe that we're not talking about unique, only the number (3*3*3 is three factors). If you think I may be wrong please skim my cube page (above) and we can talk here or via email. Thanx.

Squish7 (talk) 06:37, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the comment below that Wikipedia isn't the place for this original research. However, it would be easy to resolve this issue: someone list the numbers that actually occur in the film and whether the room is trapped or not. Then just list all the prime factors, and work out which hypothesis is correct!

Well that's what I've done, and I'm waiting for someone else to do the math and verify it. When a physicist comes out with a theory, it needs to be verified by other people, for instance, and I'm welcome for anyone else to verify my math. I agree you have a point about "original research," but I would word this "unverified proof" which I think is a tad more appropriate. There's a line between theorizing about what cannot be known given the facts (is it aliens, or not, that's interpretation), and stating what is right there in the math. I'm open to re-wording it to simply state the mathematical facts, but they should at least include the facts that had been left out, and could not include the phrase "marked by prime powers" because that's also "unverified" and even contradictory of the facts in the movie.

Lastly I think this is kind of a special case; most movies are theorized about and commented on to death by fans and experts, and the only left for Wikipedia is to sum them all up really briefly and point to the top sites or articles which have analyzed them. NOBODY has actually come forward to theorize about the math in Cube!! I don't get it! To my knowledge, there's not a single professional opinion, analysis, paper, etc, of any of the math in Cube. In place of a "General expert consensus" summary, the article might as well state "Strangely, the Math of Cube has not been analyzed by anyone, except a few people on its Wikipedia talk page now in vigorous debate", lol

I agree it's not exactly the place for an unverified theory, so someone verify it already! =)

Squish7 (talk) 05:18, 28 Feburary 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.237.228.76 (talk)

Sorry, but your theory doesn't hold up. Leaven implicitly states that she cant figure out the factors of 567, to which Kazan responds "2," meaning 3 and 7, since 567 = (3^4)(7). According to your theory he would need to have said 5 since there are 5 non-unique prime factors for 567. Interestingly enough, there are only 25 composite 3-digit prime powers. It is strange that Leaven is not capable of computing these, when she can (seemingly) tell almost instantly if a given 3-digit number is prime. Any and every university math student would be able to calculate all 25 3-digit composite prime powers in a matter of minutes. Contributions/70.225.163.141 (talk) 20:53, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

The "original math research" in this article...
As noted by this article's "tags" (as of August 2008), there sure does seem to be a lot of "original research" and "unverifiability" going on here!

I'm not sure right now how best to try to clean some of that up, but clearly much of the "math" discussion needs some attention.

The problem is how much speculation is involved in that discussion (eg., "Although not stated in the film, her calculations seem to be based..." ), and also that at least some of that speculation does not even seem to be valid (eg., "...Leaven claims to be able to navigate the maze, but could not do so without knowing what to use as the origin (0,0,0)..." ).

The discussion of the math in this film should really be limited to stating or summarizing that "math" as it is presented in the film itself (except maybe in the "Trivia" section -- but, then again, that whole section should probably go, too...;).

In this case, though, given the central relevance of "math" to plot-development, etc., I think the article should try to have at least some general discussion of what is relevant to the story (especially that which is left vague, or ambiguous, or even misleading in the film!).

So, I thought I'd try to start doing some of that sometime soon -- please feel free to discuss with me here any changes I might end up making to that end!

Wi ki sc ie nt  01:07, 17 November 2008 (UTC) ---

So... I guess I started a complete re-write of the "Mathematics in Cube" section of the article, but trying to "account for everything as clearly as possible" is taking a lot longer than I thought it would, lol!

I guess what I have so far just about establishes the basis of the system in a way that I hope will then make possible a "more rigorous" explanation of everything that takes places in the film, but I don't have any more time to get any further with it right now...

In the meantime, any comments/questions on what I have so far, of course, are welcome...
 * -- too OR?
 * -- too long-winded?
 * -- am I making anything clearer, or only less clear?!
 * -- etc...

*DRAFT* REWRITE

"Mathematics of Cube" : The mathematics of Cube have intrigued and baffled many (though director Natali reportedly hired a "math professor" to help ensure the validity of the math presented in the film).


 * The following mathematical "clues" are gradually revealed as the film progresses:
 * Every "room" within the Cube has six "doors" or exit-ways leading from it (located, one each, at the center of the floor, ceiling, and four walls).
 * Behind each of these doors is a narrow passage-way, at the opposite end of which is another door, which then opens directly into the next room. (Note that no two adjacent rooms, therefore, ever share a commondoor between them, but only a commonpassage-way).
 * Just inside the passage-way behind each door is a label consisting of a set of three 3-digit numbers (eg., "582 434 865").
 * Each passage-way therefore contains two of these labels, one at each end, each one oriented facing the door which opens to the adjacent room at that end.
 * The two labels in a any given passage-way, one by each door, are always stamped withdifferent numerical codes. In other words, it is each door that is numerically coded, not each passage-way.
 * All six of any given room's doors always havedifferent numerical codes: ie., no two doors in any given room ever have the same numerical code. This is because each door's numerical code represents the next room  immediately adjacent to that door (which is, of course, adjacent to that and only that door: six different doors, to six different rooms, so six different numerical codes).
 * Note that this also means that all six doors opposite each room, the doors at the far end of each of the six passage-ways connecting to the six rooms adjacent to it, would always have the same numerical code (since each of those doors is, of course, "adjacent to" the same room!).
 * These numerical codes, finally, are encoded "cartesian-coordinate" representations of each room's three-dimensional location within the Cube itself.
 * The actual, "decoded" coordinates are obtained from the set of three 3-digit numbers by adding together the 3 digits of each of those numbers to get three new numbers. So, for example: "582 434 865" would become "5+8+2  4+3+4  8+6+5" or "15 11 19" or, written in "coordinate notation," (15,11,19).
 * The (encoded) 3-digit numbers can consist of any combination of digits [0-9], so range from 000 to 999. The Cube's possiblecoordinate range is therefore from 0+0+0=0 to a maximum of 9+9+9=27.
 * Note, however, that the actual coordinate range for rooms is further restricted by the condition that every door must be labelled with the coordinates for the adjacent room to which it leads even if, as with some of the doors in rooms on the Cube's outer faces and edges, those adjacent rooms do not actually exist. Every room must have six labelled doors, in other words, but not every door must (or can, in a finite Cube) lead to an adjacent room.
 * Consider, for example, a room at coordinate position (0,0,0). The six doors in that room must be labelled with the coordinates of each of the six adjacent rooms, namely: (1,0,0), (-1,0,0), (0,1,0), (0,-1,0), (0,0,1), (0,0,-1).  Clearly, however, "-1" cannot result from the sum of three positive digits, [0-9].  There is no way to encode a negative coordinate in order to label three of the doors in that room.
 * A label with coordinates (0,0,0) is "encodable", but any room with those coordinates must necessarily have doors with labels that cannot be encoded: it is not possible, therefore, to have a room located at those coordinates.
 * Similarly, a room at position (27,27,27) must have rooms adjacent to it with coordinate 28, which it is not possible for any three digits to add up to, and which therefore cannot be encoded as a label for the door leading to it...
 * Therefore: 3-digit codes can range from 000 to 999, and coordinates can therefore range from 0 to 27, but the coordinates at which rooms are permitted to be located must be limited to a range of 1 to 26 (and 3-digit codes from 001 to 998).
 * The maximum possible size of the Cube is therefore 26 rooms x 26 rooms x 26 rooms, for a total of (at most) 17,576 rooms.
 * (Note that that limit exists for this reason alone. In the film it is implied, misleadingly, that this limit is derived from the physical dimensions given for the "outer shell" surrounding the Cube along with a "guesstimate" of one dimension of one room's physical size.  In fact, that data was used, in the film, only to determine if it was physically possible for the Cube to actually contain its maximum number of rooms as solely determined by its 3-digit-sum coordinate-encoding system!)
 * However, it turns out, the Cube's rooms are actually shifting positions within the Cube.
 * A room's six doors, of course, are still labeled with the coordinates of the six rooms that were adjacent to it (including some imaginary rooms, of course, in some cases) in the Cube's original, starting position -- none of which are necessarily adjacent to it at any subsequent configuration.

Wi ki sc ie nt  05:33, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'm with you on a lot of points about the re-write, however, if you're going to call "Leaven cannot navigate without knowing the origin" an extra commentary, then you can't add "The Cube's possible coordinate range is therefore from 0+0+0=0 to a maximum of 9+9+9=27." Both our comments extend what's directly there to mathematical commentary, however obvious either of our comments/extensions might be. We're both using the word "therefore," we're saying "such and such is in the movie, THEREFORE, here's a solid mathematical consequence of that math." We could just keep going and state "another mathematical consequence of the cube math is that...", etc. Further, you also can't use phrases like "it is implied misleadingly" and so on. Either we include a little collective "original research" or commentary in this article (i.e. wording like "it's been noted that leaven cannot mathematically navigate without..." AND "it should be noted that from the math given in the movie, that the that the coordinate system would range from...") or we cut it all out; you can't post your analysis, but not mine, (and visa versa of course!).

This whole page is starting to gravitate from what to post, to debate/commentary on the movie, on all ends, which isn't the purpose of this page, or the article. If we can't agree, why don't we just go talk about it elsewhere, and in the meantime, post "The math of cube is currently under intense debate by some bored article editors who have nothing better to do" =).

You can email me at [the name of this movie] / [at] / [my username] / [dot] / [com] (bots suck)

Squish7 (talk) 11:09, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Hello,

I have watched the movie Cube twice now and have noticed some interesting things in terms of the mathematics involved. I guess I will just list the things that I have discovered about the film which at this point I believe are probably correct (simple math).

- the outer shell of the cube is 434 cubic feet - because of physical measurements calculated by Leaven, each room has the internal dimension of 14 cubic feet - what is not mentioned in the film, because after all its just a movie, is that Leaven must have measured at one point or another the length of half of the hallway linking the rooms together, and would have found that dimension to be 0.75 cubic feet. - adding 14 cubic feet with 1.5 cubic feet (because there are symmetrical sides to each room 0.75*2) gives us the external dimension of each room which is therefore 15.5 cubic feet - Leaven then must have divided 434 cubic feet by 15.5 cubic feet and found that there are therefore 28 cubic rooms - * HOWEVER * Lets remember what Worth told Leaven, that the external shell was not flush with whatever was inside it, and Leaven must therefore have assumed that there was enough space between the shell and the internal cube to fit one room, because of this Leaven then calculated that there were 26 cubic rooms in total, by simply subtracting 28 rooms by 2 - at this point Leaven then concluded that there were a total of 17576 rooms in the cube - I thought about this a lot and when I watched the movie a second time I realized that I my theory was correct. What I'm talking about is the way Leaven found whether the adjacent room to the one they were in was trapped. What some people are hinting too and what I believe is correct is that what Leaven is doing is finding the number of prime factors that each 3 digit set of numbers has (prime factorization). You can find this because to make sure that Kazan could do this mentally she asked him how many factors 30 had (prime factors) and he said that there were 3 because 30 has the primes factors 2,3 and 5, since 2*3*5 = 30. She then asked the number of factors of 7, and he said 1, because 7 is prime and only has one factor and that is itself. Finally, the number of prime factors of each three digit number determines whether a room is trapped or not, if that number is a prime power, then the room is safe, otherwise it is trapped. Just to prove that this is correct, towards the end of the movie, Leaven asks Kazan for the factors, and he always states three, ex: 2,2,4. Which shows that he is finding the number of factors for each three digit number. Now 2 and 4 are both prime powers, and the group would move to the next room, but once Kazan said 1, and Leaven stated that the room was therefore trapped, since 1 is not a prime power.

Now that's only the dimensional problem and trap determination, in terms of determining the movement of each room (the permutations), well I have not yet tried to figure that out, but when I do I will post my calculations for you to see.

To conclude, I believe that my calculations and theories stated here are completely correct, since mathematically and logically it makes sense, plus just listen to what they say in the movie, it all works.

Thanks,

So yeah, I'm just gonna toss this out, because there seems to be a lot of discussion about what I thought was a relatively simple aspect of the math.

You guys seem to be discussing how Leaven determined if the rooms are trapped. I'm just gonna quote the movie here to make things clear.

Leaven: "Technically, I can identify the traps. At first I thought that they were identified by prime numbers,"

Earlier in the movie her hypothesis was that if one of the numbers was a prime, the room was trapped. So...

"identified by prime numbers" -> if one of the numbers is prime, the room is trapped

continuing on...

Leaven: "But they're not. They are identified by numbers that are the power of a prime."

Using the same phrasing here...

"identified by numbers that are the power of a prime" -> if one of the numbers is a power of a prime, the room is trapped

That can be determined simply by how she spoke.

It is also reinforced by the examples Kazan gave (more on that later).

Some people were saying they thought powers of a prime were safe, but all prime numbers are also prime powers, and we already know prime numbers lead to trapped rooms (remember, the prime number theory wasn't entirely wrong, it just wasn't so simple).

Leaven then determines if the rooms are trapped by asking Kazan how many factors the numbers have. If a number is a prime power, it has one factor. So, if Kazan said a number had one factor, that meant the room was trapped. All the other numbers are fine, because a number with more than one factor is not a prime power.

You'll note that the safe rooms never have one factor.

tl;dr: Trapped rooms are rooms in which one of the 3 numbers has only one factor (i.e. a prime power)

216.171.189.7 (talk) 06:04, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Removal of personal interpretations
Ok, so I revised the math to only include the bare facts, without mathematical interpretation. I tried to take everyone's comments on what facts should be included into account including Wikiscient's list and some facts I think were left out, while including none of our personal feelings or extended personal commentary--whether opinion or solid mathematical consequence of the facts revealed--such as my own theory of the system, concluding the full system is never fully revealed and the audience should induce this on their own. Please correct this if you think I've left anything important out, got anything wrong, or inadvertently inserted some type of opinion somewhere. (Does this work?)

I still think it would be quite interesting to debate and theorize this math with people, and would be delighted if someone were to second my proof of what marks a trapped room--that a room is trapped if "any of the numbers of prime factors of the three digit room numbers is not a prime power"--or would love to read some professional thesis if someone with a math phD were ever bored enough, but I won't hold my breath for any of those =). I think it's absolutely brilliant and quite complex, and I'm still baffled that as far as I know, there are no professional interpretations of this movie.

-Squish (squish7.com/cube)

Squish7 (talk) 23:45, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Cube : Dimensional Problem
Firstly I would like to add this post because it would appear that there are a lot of people who are having trouble understanding the dimensions of the cube in the film. Therefore, I would simply like to list the known facts from the movie, and introduce my own theories which I believe are correct.


 * - stated by Worth, the external shell containing all of the cubes has the dimensions of 434 cubic feet.
 * - Worth also states to Leaven that the external shell is not completely flush with the interior structure, and therefore Leaven concludes that the space between the shell and the interior must be able to fit another room. Based on this information and this information alone, Leaven calculates the approximate numbers of cubes that there could possibly.
 * - find the internal dimensions of the room, which Leaven finds to be 14 cubic feet
 * - now this is not shown in the movie, but Leaven must have, at one point, calculated the dimensions of half of the hallway that connects each room to one another, since two half hallways make one full hallway between two rooms. Leaven would have found the dimensions of each half hallway to be 0.75 cubic feet.
 * - since each room is symmetrical, we simply multiply 0.75 by 2, and that gives us the wall exterior of each room to be 1.5 cubic feet.
 * - at this point we now have the total external dimension of each room, which is 15.5 cubic feet.
 * - therefore, based on these results, Leaven then divided 434 cubic feet by 15.5 cubic feet, which is 28.
 * - however lets remember what Worth said, that there was a space between the shell and the interior structure, and therefore we have to take 2 off of 28 which gives us 26, the number of cubic rooms that are inside the internal structure.
 * - now we simply place 26 to the power of 3 to give us 17576 rooms total. This number gives us the maximum amount of rooms that are present in the internal structure, now that does not mean that there are exactly that many, there may not be that many at all.

These calculations are obviously very simple, and if you really pay attention to what Leaven and Worth say in the film, it all makes sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Theodore Alfred (talk • contribs) 13:21, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Another mistake many people did was the way they analyzed the numbers found in the hallways. One person posted a theory that I found was very close to the truth, but unfortunately he started going off on another path that just didn’t make any sense. I will now list the facts that were stated in the film :


 * - firstly lets discuss how and why the 3 three digit numbers are placed in the hallway. If you watch the movie carefully, you will notice towards the beginning of the film that Leaven stops in one of the hallways and starts to look at the numbers.  If you look carefully, you will see exactly how the cubes connect to each other.  They connect by interlocking teeth which make up the exterior of the hallway, and you will see very clearly that the numbers that identify a room are actually on that half of the hallway facing the room it is connected to.  Both sets of numbers, those of both rooms are situated very closely, since after all the hallway is only 1.5 feet in length.  Therefore the numbers that are first encountered when one would walk into the hallway are facing the other room, they would be upside-down, and would indicate the position of the room you are leaving.  Some people made it seem as if the numbers changed every time the room moved, which is false, only the numbers of the adjacent room would change since that room is now different, but the numbers that identify that room are still of that side of the hallway and are alway connected to the same room.
 * - now lets look at the way the numbers indicate the original position of each room. I read something from another post that was pretty close to what I believe is correct, only they started theorizing about something that really wasn’t logical.  Finding the maximum number of cubes that could be inside the larger cube has already been done using known units, however as was mentioned before the same answer can be found using basic algebra.  Now this isn’t very difficult to understand : Leaven simply found that the 3 three digit numbers represented cartesian coordinates, that is, they themselves are not coordinates themselves, only when added together do they represent the coordinates. An example of this is the three digit set of numbers 989 456 803, which would give the coordinate (26,15,11), which is that cubes original coordinate at the before it moves.
 * - now that fact is pretty simple to determine, however one person described how there are cubes that are none existent, that are virtual, since he stated that all cubes connect to another cube, and therefore it would be impossible to have a cube that has the numbers 999 = 27, since it can have a set of numbers to indicate the adjacent cube, which would have to be 28, and since you can’t have a set of numbers that is larger than 27, it would be impossible. But he couldn’t be more wrong, since lets remember the white cube that connects to the bridge, which has an x or y coordinate that is larger than 26, therefore it would be 999.  Since there is only one bridge, and only one door to exit the cube, there is only one cube that has a 3 digit set containing 999.
 * - Now on to the traps. I was getting very frustrated when I was reading the explanations that were being posted regarding this subject, some people had said that if any of the 3 digit sets were prime powers, than the room was safe.  Once again they couldn’t be more wrong, although I did read a theory from someone else that described exactly what I believe is correct.  What is going on in the film is that Leaven thought that if there was any number in the three digit set that was prime, so 305 602 912, which would be (8,8,12), because 8 and 12 are numbers that are not prime, the room would be safe.  She then found out that that theory was wrong, and came to another conclusion that involved prime powers.  Now many people believe that if the three digit number is a prime power, the room is safe, however what Leaven was doing was finding the number of prime factors that each three digit number had, using Kazan, and if that number was a prime power, than that room was safe.  For example, if we had the set of numbers : 160 241 196, 160 has 2 prime factors, 241 has one prime factor and 196 has 2 prime factors, so Kazan would say 2,1,2.  Therefore the adjacent room would not be safe, since 2 is a prime power but 1 is not.

If you watch the movie again and pay attention you will find that my theory works every time, even with the rooms that are trapped at the beginning before Leaven finds the correct theory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Theodore Alfred (talk • contribs) 16:52, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Occam's Razor Cubed
This is partly (continuing) discussion about the movie, but only to approach harmony with our arguments over what to put in the article. This has been kind of a rare bird as the math is incredibly baffling, and people look up the movie to have it explained, yet there's nothing to reference I know of that's covered it. Anyway I'm clearing up an old debate, I hope this helps. On the bright side, our discussion page has become the leading Cube Math publication in the world^. [^According to this paragraph.]

After dealing with a ton of image/fractal math (i.e. rendering for efficient scaling to two image resolutions by multiplying shared factors by non-shared), and speaking with an engineer yesterday about various topics, I came back to this debate. I stated way back that I thought I'd come up with the simplest explanation of what marks a trapped room, and kept asking people to come up with a simpler one, thinking the simplest theory should be stated. For instance: if someone says "2, 4, and 8 are nifty numbers", one may speculate various things: A) Numbers below 10 are nifty, B) Powers of 2 are nifty, C) All numbers are nifty. We couldn't resolve the argument, so we just left it at the absolute basic facts, with minimal interpretation.

Reading the current article, I was shocked to read that there was an "error" in the film. I checked, and realized that this, too, is an interpretation. I.e. "384" swings onto the screen preceding a shot of Kazaan saying "one", but this could be meant to symbolize transition, not the number Kazaan is looking at in the next shot, as there are a lot of quick cuts throughout the movie to get the feel of the various things that are happening. So, I reworded the "error" to be only a potential one, which should be noted, as it's screwy enough to have generated the whole earlier debate. To clear it up quick for anyone with PTSD on the matter...

People kept saying that trapped rooms are marked with prime powers. I believe I discarded this due to this "384" pan, as it's not a prime power, yet seems to be the number used to decide the room is trapped (if it carries over). The main interpretation discarded, I came up with what I still believe to be the next simplest theory: That a room is trapped if the number of prime factors of any of the room numbers is NOT a power of a prime. ("Identified by prime powers", when "prime powers" is a collective noun, could mean "identified by [a system utilizing] prime powers". This is perhaps a less simple grammatical consequence, but I had to come up with a second theory if that number carried over.)

The bizarre thing is that both theories simultaneously still fit all the facts of the film (barring the 384 thing which my system would bypass). That is, that 2, 3, 4, & 5 are safe factors, and 1 is a trapped factor. They would conflict for "6" however, but a room is not revealed with 6 factors, hence as is, my theory is still correct, though I agree that 384 is probably a non sequitur transition (or error) now that it's been pointed out, making the main interpretation appropriate. Squish7 (talk) 13:33, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

O/R Death Trap (Original Research)
I'm getting Quentin-level frustrated with having my "original research" taken down and other "original research" remaining up. I don't understand the precise "voting" system here. If 2 people interpret things one way, and 1 person interprets something another way, then the "original research" of the 2 people is what goes up? If so, that's fine, really, but it doesn't seem to click with the spirit of not having "original research".

Every... single... line of every single Wikipedia article that doesn't have a reference number at the end IS ORIGINAL RESEARCH. Every..single...statement would have to be verified by another party under the full implementation of this rule. You can't say "Star Trek is a science-fiction show" without the reader asking, "I want to know where the writer is getting that, I don't trust this". So, watching Cube for information to put in an article is "original research" by every possible sense of the term intrinsically. That's research that other people aren't doing, or that even nobody has ever done. At the absolute least, it's the worst titled clause imaginable. You may mean no "minority research" or "nonconsensus research" or "early research" or "disproved research" or "poor research", but if you really meant "original research", then every line in any W article without a reference quote would be INVALID.

Because the rule is so absurdly vague, people should have the intelligence to recognize its weaknesses. A film with which the only people who understand it are the document writers (or the only ones documented in a "reliable source" analyzing it, that is, W) presents THIS disucssion page as "Cube O/R prime". If you're researching Cube by watching the film, you can't note "see the film Cube" at the end of every line. It's just implied someone isn't lying through their teeth when they say, "Kazaan did not wear a polka-dot shirt in this movie". E.g., the entire number system explained on the page is O/R. It's revealed coordinates are obtained "by adding the numbers", so it's just a dead-obvious deduction to state in the article, "for instance, the coordinates for the room 123 456 789 are 1+2+3=6, 4+5+6=15, and 7+8+9=24, so 6,15,24". You don't have to put "...says such and such math professor at MIT, who analyzed the movie, because Wikipedia article writers aren't credible mathemeticians".

You're avoiding what you're actually talking about. When you're telling me you don't like my "original research", you're saying I LOST THE VOTE. That's absolutely fine, for there to be democracy, just stop LYING about what it actually IS. Either say "too many people disagree with you" or do your own original research to tell me why I'm wrong. You can't eliminate research by nitpicking people's wordings or grammar. That there "seems" to be something is near-isomorphic to "there is clearly factually this and this fact that leave such and such open to the viewer's interpretation". Another example, my original mathematical interpretation HOLDS. I've conceeding it is MORE speculative than the simplest interpretation, but even if I still believed it is the interpretation that should be posted in the article, I would be annoyed that the "consensus" research has gone up unless you actually call my research "minority" which I could except.

Here's the issue that brought this up:

Basic line > The traps are identified by numbers that are the power of a prime.

Someone's addition > ...however there is an error made here as the number 384 is incorrectly stated by Kazan to have one factor when it actually has two(27 * 3), it is not the power of a prime but Leaven says the room is trapped.

This is a speculative opinion. You can't know that unless you investigate the claim, however, as I did. I examined what this was talking about, and it's referring to a shot of the number "384" that appears before a shot of Kazaan looking at a number, which we can't see. Because the movie uses the method of signifying the progression of time via showing random room numbers that don't apply to any specific system, there's no way to know for sure that the number 384 wasn't just part of this intended transition process. It's very unclear. It's not just speculatively unclear. It's factually, presentably, provably unclear. That FACT (unless disputed as such by another party) is presentable as information, something brought to the article reader's attention, who may make their own interpretation. Hence this is my revision, which got removed:

My correction/improvement > (There is one unclear transition which is open to audience interpretation when seeking to verify or disprove this statement. The number 384 flashes quickly into view preceding a shot of Kazaan saying "one", while 384 has two factors (27 * 3), and hence is not a prime power, yet Leaven declares the room is trapped. This is an ambiguous cut, as the number pan could also be meant to symbolize transition, not the number looks at in the next shot, which is hidden from view.)

I almost just deleted the line for being O/R (as you say), but I went and I supplemented the O/R with my own O/R, which is how we write articles (O/R!). Hence, I'm not just annoyed that only my O/R is taken down, I'm just baffled that there's a policy which pulls back research about a topic instead of promoting the best possible research (i.e. by multiple people). For instance, because the information was new to me, I was interested to discover it. That's one reason I didn't just take it down, because this W article was giving me information I didn't have, and which someone else may have found useful. In any case, if If BOTH my findings and the original were O/R, then BOTH should be removed, yet only mine was.

Again, what's the difference between saying "The editors of this article do not agree on this issue", and "There is debate among the general Cube community of what such-and-such statement in the film means; here are the factual errors, make your own decision"?. Have the brains to process the SPIRIT of your O/R clauses you keep spitting in my face. They don't apply if the encyclopedia editors basically ARE the "Cube community" that interprets the film. I don't object to having consensus interpretations up, I object to insulting one side for being a minority, or for randomly selecting/insulting where there isn't a consensus. Again, The O/R line which I improved upon by supplementing with more O/R would have remained less accurate if I had not read the original line. It can be made better with more O/R. This is how research is done. This is how articles are written. I know absolutely full well the principles you're talking about, but it's just the worst NAMED principle in existence.

What we're left with. The issue here whether the flash of 384 is an error OR a symbolic transition not meant to signify the number read in the next shot, should be either A) left entirely to this discussion page and off the main article (I've deleted both opinions for the moment), or B) presented factually with information on the unresolved dispute (such as my tedious correction worded carefully after being pummeled on the head with O/R bats); that is, presented effectively as a "conflict among the Cube analysis community", i.e. us (though not verbatim). That's how this article has been written and is being maintained. If there is a Harvard or MIT publication by a reputable professor outlining all these issues, please find it, otherwise, the ONLY research there is is our collective "original research".

Also note why this was called an "error". It was an "error" because it would disprove your math interpretations if it ISN'T an error. This explains the extent of my outburst. Your developing further proof for the consensus theory on what constitutes a trapped room, by just plain claiming there are mathematical errors! My interpretation of symbolic transition is somewhat an olive branch. Without it, the consensus/simplest math system is disproved by counter-example, and the one I came up with is the only one left standing. Squish7 (talk) 03:27, 3 September 2011 (UTC)


 * The other original research should get pulled too. It's possible your edits are getting reverted while the other stuff remains because more people have added the article to their watchlist but haven't read it in a while, so they're only seeing the more recent edits.  Millahnna (talk) 04:35, 3 September 2011 (UTC)


 * It's a little more complex than that. I just noticed that the person who removed my comment was an IP user without an account (I don't understand why that's allowed...?); from their message, they seemed to have removed the comment based on the grammar/format of how I wrote it.  I.e. I don't think they actually checked this page and read my extended explanation of it.  While that might reduce my irritation to having been corrected without careful examination, it remains I'm not sure how to re-word what I wrote.  In fact, it should be that person's job if they don't like it, not mine.


 * Let me lay this out again. with this film and article, the statements on the main article page are of a general style that could mean that hundreds of MIT professors evaluated the movie and these conclusions were come to, or that a few W editors on this page had an argument and came to a consensus.  If those professors were split on an issue, it would be worth reporting "MIT professors are split between this issue".  I believe we have a very similar equivalent here; particularly with this issue.  An isomorphism, that is (that this discussion page represents the equivalent of professional evaluation, because it's the ONLY evaluation any of us knows about as far as I know).


 * So.. As far as I know and see it, what we have is a solid disagreement that no one on this page wants to hold an international conference to resolve. Let me correct that.  It's barely a disagreement because I think people would agree with my final/current interpretations.  That is, that there is NOT an error in the movie, and that this whole 384 cut issue is just symbolic interpretation.  That's makes all of us--and the movie as well--correct and accurate, and all "in the same box".


 * The trouble is wording the interpretation in a way that sounds like "80 college professors came to this interpretation based on..." because we have the best equivalent. In retro maybe it's best it just stay off.  It's a little tricky to word, "if you want to verify this, this might be where you run into a mistake."  I think my main final/current point is that what I wrote was an exception to the "tells" and common grammatical structure of your negative O/R.  It doesn't seem fair to remove 100% of statements with a certain grammatical structure/wording just because 99% of them are in error.. (?) Squish7 (talk) 04:58, 3 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I'll take a look for the IP reverts and see if I can't make some sense out of it. It'll have to be later in the weekend for me and there's a likelyhood I'll need assistance from more experience film project people. I wish we did have a source talking about MIT peeps chewing on the math in this movie.  That would be awesome to add.  Guess I know what I'm googling on Sunday.  Millahnna (talk) 05:25, 3 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Honestly, that type of reverse deduction may be a headache, and probably unnecessary. The section right now is in good solid "stub" form, imo.  I've already tentatively took down the issues I brought to in question, as I said, and now I've added a disclaimer that the section is only the interpretation of W editors and to "improve the section" by contributing research.  (Please tell me if this should be formatted or worded differently.  I think the honesty belongs there, just like the flag boxes.)  The only thing wrong with the section right now is that it's too damn short.  All the more elaborate evaluations have been omitted because we can't agree on anything.  Again, it's free of excess O/R, except that the whole thing is still basically O/R, but imho there is nothing worth immediate attention.  Don't lose your Sunday over the math or anything (or your life for that matter). Squish7 (talk) 05:53, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

I would just like to point out that in the movie commentary, they mention that some of the numbers are *not* correct.98.160.239.73 (talk) 04:47, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Problem with the ending
I just watched this movie on Amazon, and I watched the ending twice to be sure. After Kazan walks into the white light, the movie ends. This never happened: "Then the camera pans back to the room where Joan dies. She twitches and murmurs something about the cube being a triangle by logarithmic trigonometrical calculus, and the film ends in a flash of white."

If there is an alternate or extended ending to the movie, it needs to be identified as such, doesn't it?

76.104.85.67 (talk) 03:02, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree. Until a source can be provided stating that such an alternate ending exists, it should be removed. I own a DVD of this movie and at least that DVD does not contain such an ending. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 10:29, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Who the hell is Joan anyway? There wasn't a character named Joan. Squish7 (talk) 08:47, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Names being prisons
I've removed the following section, as it is completely uncited:


 * Character names
 * All the characters are named after prisons:
 * Quentin - San Quentin State Prison, California
 * Holloway - Holloway Prison in London
 * Kazan - the prison in Kazan, Russia
 * Rennes - a prison in Rennes, France
 * Alderson - Alderson Federal Prison Camp, Alderson, West Virginia
 * Leaven and Worth - United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth, Leavenworth, Kansas.

After all, just about anyone is named for a prison. My own "surname" here, Sebastian, could correspond with San Sebastian Prison in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The point is, we as editors cannot make the observation; it must be a reliable, verifiable and notable source that makes that connection. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 17:19, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

If this is removed here, shouldn't it also be taken off of the Cube (film series) page as well? Patrick of J (talk) 00:16, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Joan Leaven?
I've posted a message similar to this over on the talk page for Nicole de Boer.

On her filmography, her role in Cube is listed as Joan Leaven. I've watched the film 3 times in the last few days (and many, many times before that) and have NEVER seen or heard any reference to the first name Joan. I've searched the internet for any concrete evidence, and while nearly every site uses Joan Leaven there's absolutely no evidence to explain where it comes from. However, I'm willing to admit that perhaps it was mentioned in the film and fell under my radar; my point is not to debate the use of Joan, only to point out that there ought to be consistency between the Cube article and the filmography of Nicole de Boer's page. Patrick of J (talk) 00:15, 26 June 2014 (UTC)


 * And were does "McNeil" come from? It isn't in the credits, script nor transcript. StrayBolt (talk) 17:37, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Cube is a reworking of a Twilight Zone episode
Feels like it's worth mentioning that Cube is a reworking of the Twilight Zone episode Five Characters in Search of an Exit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dmillman (talk • contribs) 16:34, 9 May 2022 (UTC)