This is a lot like when Boston PD was found to screen out all the smart applicants. Sometime the company wants an obedient idiot.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/too-smart-to-be-a-cop/

Too many people are obsessing about 4d topology in this thread. The real difficulty in the question is the non -deterministic pathfinding of the ant, in the absence of pheromones.

making sure you cannot solve it, so you are perfect for the job

Sure. Draw the cube for me and I will plot it's path.

Four dimensional? That is a tesseract. This is impossible to describe how an ant would even interact with let alone touch all eight cells only once.

One does not simply walk into the 4th dimension

At $14.50 per hour, he's going to take the shortest route.

Entry level positions to Gregg's (fast food sausage roll chain) require 1000 word personal statements as part of online applications

This is actually quite fun and simple! Even if the problem and my following explanation look complicated :P

Let's look at the three dimensional case. One can parametrize a 3 dimensional cube as the Cartesian product of intervals [0, 1] x [0, 1] x [0, 1]. This means a cube is a set of points (a, b, c) where a, b and c are real numbers between 0 and 1. The 2 dimensional sides of the cube are then given by fixing one coordinate. That is, the 6 sides are

{0}    x [0, 1] x [0, 1], 
{1}    x [0, 1] x [0, 1], 
[0, 1] x {0}    x [0, 1], 
[0, 1] x {1}    x [0, 1], 
[0, 1] x [0, 1] x {0} and 
[0, 1] x [0, 1] x {1}. 

Now we just start in the middle of a side at (0, 0.5, 0.5). To get to the next side we walk towards an edge (0, 0, 0.5) and then to the middle of the next side (0.5, 0, 0.5). We iterate this process until we run out of sides with a fixed 0, then walk towards a side with a fixed 1 and continue there. That is:

   (0  , 0.5, 0.5)
-> (0  , 0  , 0.5) 
-> (0.5, 0  , 0.5) 
-> (0.5, 0  , 0  ) 
-> (0.5, 0.5, 0  ) 
-> (1  , 0.5, 0  ) 
-> (1  , 0.5, 0.5) 
-> (1  , 1  , 0.5) 
-> (0.5, 1  , 0.5) 
-> (0.5, 1  , 1  ) 
-> (0.5, 0.5, 1  ) 

This path basically spirals around the cube, going through every side only once. Here's a visualization (sorry, I'm no artist :P)

The same procedure works on a 4 dimensional cube or any other higher dimension. For the 4 dimensional cube it goes like this:

   (0  , 0.5, 0.5, 0.5)
-> (0  , 0  , 0.5, 0.5) 
-> (0.5, 0  , 0.5, 0.5) 
-> (0.5, 0  , 0  , 0.5) 
-> ...
-> (0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0  )
-> (1  , 0.5, 0.5, 0  )
-> (1  , 0.5, 0.5, 0.5)
-> (1  , 1  , 0.5, 0.5)
-> ...
-> (0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1  )

This works for arbitrary dimension except for the 1 dimensional cube (which is just a line) because the "sides" there are the two end points of the line and not connected at all. Additionally note, that it is never specified how edges count in this problem, whether they somehow count towards a face or whether you're allowed to go back and fourth on edges. You could technically only walk along edges and step into the sides every now and then.

Choose a starting face and remember it. Walk each face of a cell containing that face touching each face once much like you would a 3-cube.

Pick any adjoining cell and move into one of its faces from there, walk each of its faces saving the one opposite the face you started on for last.

From there you're on a shared face with the cell opposite your starting cell. Traverse this one in a similar manner to the last, but this time also visit the adjoining faces of each cell adjacent to the second cell you filled, before once again ending opposite the face you started on for this cell.

Now you're on a shared face with the final cell, opposite the face you started on. Walk around the remaining four faces and you're done.

Wait, isn’t this trivial?

If we’re talking about “faces” as in the cubic faces of a tesseract then each of the 8 faces are connected to all other faces except the opposite face. So just spiral around from your starting face (keeping the faces you’ve visited on the inside of the spiral) and you’re fine.

If you mean 2D faces connecting the 3D ones, then things get more difficult but not that much because you can do the exact same thing. Choose a 1D edge as your origin, pick a face touching that edge to start with, traverse that edge twice to get the next two faces. Then traverse three faces which share edges with those faces you already traversed (there are 6 faces with this property, 3 for each vertex of our origin edge, the set you pick determines the “direction” of your overall progress through/around the tesseract). Repeat that step again but for the faces that share edges with two of the three you just did. Repeat again and again and again until the last three faces share a vertex with the origin edge you started with. You’re done.

Am I missing something? Did the prompt mean to say you can only traverse each edge once?

Edit: the 2D face path I described would miss 6 faces. Those six faces should be traversed in the middle, so do the first three faces, the second three, then all six which touch both those three you just traversed and the three you would have done next on the original path. Then do the rest just like I originally mentioned.

Well I think the ant would probably wander around until it found food

tricky with only four dimentions, but I'd use a Grathenbour's loop with a transverse Z axis movement if gimbal locks are ignored, naturally.

This is a direct appliacation of the hairy ball theorem.

I ain't even kidding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairy_ball_theorem

Okay, if you can explain to me in detail how four dimensional topology is going to be important to me while I'm stocking the shelves of your grocery store, I'll give you an answer.

Be glad you got the shitty interview instead of getting ghosted

Forward, left, right, forward, left.

Also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-dimensional_sequential_move_puzzle and

https://hypercubing.xyz/software/

Am I fucking stupid? Just walk in a shallow spiral?

"it would start by crawling up your ass."

Isn't a cube by definition a 3 dimensional object? If it were 4 dimensional, it would no longer be a cube.

"They would head towards the exit" and before they process youre already standing up and walking away.

"Being that the fourth dimension is time, it would need a flux capacitor and have to hit 88mph but where he's going he doesn't need 'sides.'"

We gotta start laughing in their faces

"with it's legs"

They specifically didn't say it was a hypercube, so I'm going to assume its a normal cube traveling through time and say that it could get to a max of 5 faces by moving forward 3 times, turning 90 degrees and moving forward again. The 6th face can be reached, if the cube's gravity-well is high enough, by getting a really good running start and jumping over the next to land on the 6th, Otherwise the ant is fucked and his father is very disappointed in him.

isn't 4d a line of cubes? would need 6d for cubes of cubes?