Stone Bricks

Stone Brick is one of the materials that are used in Strongholds. Stone bricks have the same blast resistance as Brick or Cobblestone; a TNT block surrounded by either of these will only destroy one block in each direction. All variants of Stone Brick have the same blast resistance. They can be mined with any pickaxe, but not by hand.

Cracked Stone Brick is a variant of a Stone Brick. It can be found in Strongholds, which were also implemented in the 1.8 update. Its texture is a stone brick texture modified to make it look cracked; however, this does not affect its blast resistance or mining time. This item cannot be crafted, but can be used to craft other blocks the same way as regular Stone Brick.

Mossy Stone Brick is another variant of a Stone Brick. It can also be found in Strongholds. Its texture is a stone brick texture modified to add a mossy effect, much like moss stone. Like Cracked Stone Brick, this item cannot be crafted, but can craft other blocks.

Chiseled Stone Brick is yet another variant of a Stone Brick. It can be found in Jungle temples. It can be used to craft other blocks in the same way that Cracked and Mossy Stone Brick can.

Crafting
Regular Stone Bricks can be crafted by placing 4 Stone blocks in a square, meaning they can be crafted without a Crafting Table.

Chiseled Stone Bricks can be crafted by placing 8 Stone blocks in a circle, so they need a Crafting Table.

The other types of Stone Brick cannot currently be crafted.

Stone Bricks are made from Stone, which normally must be smelted from Cobblestone by the player. To save resources, the player might use a Silk Touch enchantment for a pickaxe on natural Stone. However, this might be more labor intensive, considering the process to enchant a pick. This also does not account for the random results of enchanting.

As Stone Bricks offer no real advantage over Cobblestone, their main use is decoration, and are commonly used as a building material for castles by many players, due to the medieval look not found in Stone and Cobblestone. They also have advantages over normal Bricks, as Cobblestone is much more common than Clay, and, when smelted, produces full blocks rather than individual Bricks: a stack of Stone Bricks requires only 8 coal to smelt, while a stack of Bricks requires 32.

Trivia

 * Monster eggs always take longer to break with a pickaxe than regular Stone Bricks.
 * Cracked and mossy stone bricks are never silverfish blocks. However silverfish can "crawl" into them changing their damage value to that of a smooth stone brick.
 * In the code, cobblestone is named "stonebrick". Stone Bricks, however, are named "stonebricksmooth"
 * If you harvested stairs and created "different" stone brick (stone brick with a damage value of 3, which didn't stack with normal stone brick) in beta 1.8, in 1.2, it is now chiseled stone brick.
 * The texture for stone bricks is also extremely similar to the game Metagun's stone brick texture, made by Notch for Ludum Dare.
 * Any mixture of regular, Cracked and Mossy Stone Bricks can be used to make Stone Brick Stairs and Stone Brick Slabs.