MathOverflow will be down for maintenance for approximately 3 hours, starting Monday evening (06/24/2013) at approximately 9:00 PM Eastern time (UTC-4).
show/hide this revision's text 3 I hope that problem is now clear

Input: set of bricks, each one is made of 1x1x1 cubes glued together face to face, like tetris pieces.

Problem: find the way of putting together those pieces to make a solid that contains biggest full cubical subsolid.

For example, the solid below contains a 2x2x2 cube

Is there any smart algorithm I could use in this kind of problem? The only solution that comes to mind is ordinary brute force. I'm looking for ideas for an accurate algorithm as well as an approximation algorithm.

show/hide this revision's text 2 Added image, cleaned up some grammar

Input: set of bricks, each one is made of 1x1x1 cubes glued together (face to face- , like tetris pieces) .

Problem: find the way of putting together those pieces to make a solid that contains biggest fulle.g. this

For example, the solid below contains a 2x2x2 cube http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/7895/clipboard03gj.jpg

Is there any smart algorithm I could use in this kind of problem. ? The only solution that comes to my mind is ordinary brute force. I'm looking for ideas for an accurate algorithm and approximated oneas well as an approximation algorithm.

show/hide this revision's text 1

biggest cube problem (given set of bricks)

Input: set of bricks, each one is made of 1x1x1 cubes glued together (face to face- like tetris pieces) Problem: find the way of putting together those pieces to make a solid that contains biggest full e.g. this solid contains 2x2x2 cube http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/7895/clipboard03gj.jpg

Is there any smart algorithm I could use in this kind of problem. The only solution that comes to my mind is ordinary brute force. I'm looking for ideas for accurate algorithm and approximated one.