6 cardinal directions like the faces of a cube; 12 diagonals like the edges of a cube; and 8 diagonals like the corners of a cube.
you can also think of it as a 3x3x3 hollow cube where each direction corresponds to a cube.
for convenience you could label each direction with a latin letter, and map it to those letters on a keyboard
Top Layer:
ABC
DEF
GHI
Middle Layer:
JKL
M N
OPQ
Bottom Layer:
RST
UVW
XYZ
