Common sense? I failed maths GCE 1st time, but looked at that and saw a simple multiplication. Trouble is that modern minds keep on wanting to change things. 9x9x9 would have been easily comprehensible. Senseless, to me, to lose the 'x' sign.
Since the OP was in Excelspeak, it seemed logical to express cubing the same way - I agree that the superscripted ³ is the more usual way in non-spreadsheet usage.
Mamy gave the answer in the very first post. There's no issue here. Multiplication (aka timesing) can be indicated by different notations, e.g. * or x or X or .
End of.
:-)