A solid cube of side 6 is first painted pink and then cut into smaller cubes of side 2. How many of the smaller cubes have paint on exactly 2 sides?

When the larger cube is cut into smaller cubes, the corner cubes will have paint on three sides. The cubes in the middle of the faces will have paint on only one side, but the cubes cut from the edges will have paint on two sides. In this case, there will be only one cube one each edge (excluding the corners), and since there are 12 edges, there will be 12 cubes with paint on two sides.