I posed my son a puzzle today. He’s a student, in senior high school, and exams are ever in his mind. I told him a story of four students who missed their exam, and gave him some information about them.
Category: Puzzles
Magic Squares from Latin Squares
The most recent game I uploaded to this site is a Printable Latin Square Puzzle. The goal of the puzzle is to arrange a set of 16 cards into a 4 by 4 grid, following certain rules.
The Puzzle Universe – A History of Mathematics in 315 Puzzles
The other day I received a marvellous package in the post. Inside was a book, The Puzzle Universe, by Ivan Moscovich, published by Firefly Books. Ivan Moscovich has made a career out of making amazing mathematical puzzles and games.
Continue reading The Puzzle Universe – A History of Mathematics in 315 Puzzles
A Probability Puzzle From Dilbert’s Author
I’ve been reading this book, by Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert. Inside, I found a probability puzzle!
Scott Adams talks about Volleyball games, and how he noticed that the team that reaches 17 first usually wins. (A win in volleyball is 25 points.)
Coffee and Coconuts
I’ve been playing with word puzzles lately – I want to add some more games to another website I have: Dr Mike’s Word Games for Kids. I don’t talk much about it, because it’s only got two games on it so far … that’s clearly not enough!
Jigsaw Puzzles and the Riemann Hypothesis
[This is a back-issue of one of this site’s newsletters]
Here’s a simple-sounding puzzle: I give you a bunch of triangular tiles. What shapes can you make with them? The tiles are all the same size, all equilateral triangles. You have to use all the tiles I give you.
How Much For 12 Shirts?
I spotted this sign at a shirt shop while on holidays overseas:
Can You Solve This Puzzle?
I saw this puzzle the other day.
You have two fuses. Each fuse is a piece of string, that burns for exactly 1 minute. However, the fuse doesn’t burn evenly, so cutting the fuse in half doesn’t give you two 30 second fuses.
More On The Rectangle Puzzle
Last week, I posted a solution to a puzzle – how can you find a rectangle whose area equals its perimeter?
This week, I’ll post a simpler solution.
Rectangles and Right Triangles
Can you find a rectangle whose perimeter equals its area?
I’ll explain one way to solve this puzzle below.
Allergy warning: this product contains algebra. May contain traces of number theory.