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Hidden face of a painted unit cube

Question

A 3×3×33\times3\times3 cube built from 2727 white unit cubes has its entire outer surface painted red and is then taken apart. You pick one of the 2727 unit cubes at random and set it down in a uniformly random orientation, so that you can see five of its faces and one face is hidden. All five visible faces are white. What is the probability that the hidden face is red?

Short answer

1/21/2. Only two kinds of cube can show five white faces: the single unpainted centre cube (always) and the 66 face-centre cubes with one red face (when that face is hidden, probability 1/61/6). These give 127\tfrac{1}{27} and 627⋅16=127\tfrac{6}{27}\cdot\tfrac16=\tfrac{1}{27}, equally likely, so the answer is 12\tfrac12.

Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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