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12 friends decide to play Tic-Tac-Toe on the surfaces of an opened Rubik's Cube which looks like this:

Net of a Rubik's Cube, opened out


When closed, the orientation of this Rubik's Cube is as follows:

Surface Colour
Up White
Down Yellow
Left Orange
Right Red
Front Green
Back Blue

Six different sets of two friends each play on six different surfaces as shown:

Surface X O
Up Adam Noah
Down Alan Umar
Left Charles Thomas
Right Alex Bob
Front Dan Fred
Back Kevin Ryan

Match 1: Annotated Rubik's Cube net showing Match 1 outcomes

Winning Word = OUTLAW


Match 2: Annotated Rubik's Cube net showing Match 2 outcomes

Winning Word = UNCOWL


Match 3: Annotated Rubik's Cube net showing Match 3 outcomes

Winning Word = GUFFAW


Match 4:

Annotated Rubik's Cube net showing Match 4 outcomes

Winning Word = CORRAL


Match 5:

Annotated Rubik's Cube net showing Match 5 outcomes

Winning Word = ______


Match 6:

Annotated Rubik's Cube net showing Match 6 outcomes

Winning Word = ______


What are the winning words of matches 5 and 6?

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  • $\begingroup$ Is this an entry for the September MTC? It involves tic-tac-toe after all... $\endgroup$
    – Stiv
    Commented Sep 2, 2022 at 18:19
  • $\begingroup$ @Stiv I didn't know about that. I just created it for fun. $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 3, 2022 at 1:50

1 Answer 1

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They are literally winning words because..

... they are anagrams of the first letters of 'the winner in each match', 'colour of the board they played' and 'its orientation when the cube is closed'.

We can see that..

in each cube net, there are only two winners. Considering above details, we can get the 6 letters of the winning word.

We can list down them as,

winner|surface colour|orientation
Match 1:
ADAM   |WHITE  |UP    (X)
THOMAS |ORANGE |LEFT  (O)  (OUTLAW)
Match 2:
NOAH   |WHITE  |UP    (O)
CHARLES|ORANGE |LEFT  (X)  (UNCOWL)
Match 3:
ADAM   |WHITE  |UP    (X)
FRED   |GREEN  |FRONT (O)  (GUFFAW)
Match 4:
CHARLES|ORANGE |LEFT  (X)
ALEX   |RED    |RIGHT (X)  (CORRAL)

Now using the same logic for remaning two matches we get..

Match 5:

ALAN   |YELLOW |DOWN (X)
RYAN   |BLUE   |BACK (O) 
Match 6:
KEVIN  |BLUE   |BACK (X)
UMAR   |YELLOW |DOWN (O) 

from where we can identify the other two winning words as,

DRABBY* and DYBBUK.

*thanks to @MOehm for finding this word.

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  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Well done. (Chamber's word wizard suggests this.) $\endgroup$
    – M Oehm
    Commented Sep 2, 2022 at 18:49

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