I didn't know that you could make the cubes smaller than the base dimension. You're telling me that a 40-ft. cube can be disassembled (if shapeable) into 64 10-ft. cubes? That *is* awfully handy.
[edit] You know, it's not awfully clear how shapeable is supposed to work with something like
Control Water. I've been interpreting it as saying that you could affect a smaller area than desired; a 100 x 200 x 40 foot area instead of the 200 x 200 x 40. But you couldn't make a series of troughs in the area.
Earthquake is also shapeable, and it is even less clear how that would work. Again I'd suppose that you could affect a smaller area than desired, but you only have one "dial" to control; the radius of the spread.
How do you interpret these spells?