We study the Cox ring of the moduli space of stable pointed rational curves, M 0,n , via the closely related permutohedral (or Losev-Manin) spaces L n−2 . Our main result establishes n 2 polynomial subrings of Cox(M 0,n ), thus giving collections of boundary variables that intersect the ideal of relations of Cox(M 0,n ) trivially. As applications, we give a combinatorial way to partially solve the Riemann-Roch problem for M 0,n , and we show that all relations in degrees of Cox(M 0,6 ) arising from certain pull-backs from projective spaces are generated by the Plücker relations.Date: October 29, 2018.Since for each n there correspond n 2 different permutohedral spaces according to a choice of poles (see Section 3), we obtain n 2 polynomial subrings of Cox(M 0,n ). An immediate corollary is that the corresponding subrings of the ring of generators meet the ideal of relations trivially. In addition, Theorem 1.1 provides a partial solution to the Riemann-Roch problem for M 0,n : for any divisor D with a nontrivial section in the image of f * above, the dimension of global sections h 0 (M 0,n , D) equals that of its preimage in L n−2 , which can be calculated by counting lattice points in a corresponding polytope.Theorem 1.1 follows from a detailed study of Kapranov's blow-up construction of M 0,n . The key technical result states that the pull-back and proper-transforms of the centers being blown up coincide, even for n ≥ 6 when the blow-up centers are not all disjoint (see Proposition 3.5).As an application, in Section 4 we exhibit degrees of Cox(M 0,n ) that always contain relations and show that, for n = 6, these relations are generated by Plücker relations. The proof follows similar lines to those used in [LV09] to prove the Batyrev-Popov conjecture that the Cox rings of del Pezzo surfaces (including M 0,5 ) are quadratic algebras. Theorem 1.1 provides the bridge between del Pezzo surfaces and M 0,n . We hope that this analogy can be extended to find a presentation of the Cox ring of M 0,6 .The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we introduce the spaces M 0,n and L n−2 , present basic facts and notation from toric geometry, and then define the Cox ring of a projective variety. Section 3 contains the proof of Theorem 1.1, obtained by studying the blow-up constructions of L n−2 and M 0,n , with attention focused on how divisor classes in L n−2 pull back to M 0,n . Of particular use is the language of 'clean intersections.' Originally defined by Bott in [Bot56] in the context of differential geometry, we use the more algebraic formulation of [Li09]. Section 4 then contains the application to relations in Cox(M 0,6 ). Definition 3.12. For J ⊆ {1, . . . , n − 2}, 1 ≤ |J| ≤ n − 3, let ∆ ′ J∪{n} be the torus-invariant divisor V ( ρ J ≥0 ).If 1 ≤ |J| ≤ n − 4, then ∆ ′ J∪{n} = E ′ J , while for |J| = n − 3, ∆ ′ J∪{n} is the proper transform of the line containing all l J ′ ⊆ P n−3 , with J ′ J. As with boundary divisors in M 0,n , we will identify ∆ ′ J and ∆ ′ J c . Corollary 3.13. For every bo...