Other Mathematics Commons^™

A Gathering For Gardner Puzzle-Game, Jeremiah Farrell, Chris Morgan

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Each different letter of "GATHERING FOR GARDNER" is used exactly three times in the following words: DIE, FAD, FIT, FOG, GIN, HAG, HER, HOD, NOR, RAT, TEN.

Alice In Wonderland For G4g13, Jeremiah Farrell, Emmanuelle Malte Salvatore, Todd Wilk Estroff

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Each of the ten different letters in the title is used exactly three times to form the words in the circles. Martin Gardner's famous work The Annotated Alice was first published in 1960 and we honor him in this essay.

Euler Entertainments, Jeremiah Farrell, Karen Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

No abstract provided.

Martin Gardner Puzzle-Games, Stephen Bloom, Lacey Echols, Jeremiah Farrell, Shannon Lieb

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

No abstract provided.

The Tea Party, Stephen Bloom, Jeremiah Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

No abstract provided.

The Jin And Jang Of Quantum Physics Truth Tables, Shannon Lieb, Jeremiah Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

No abstract provided.

Kate Jones – A Tribute, Karen Farrell, Jeremiah Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Kate is also an accomplished recreational mathematician and poet. To try to match in a small way her creative ability, we offer three puzzle-games in her honor: O'BEIRNE's TRI-HEX, PAPPUS and "KATe JONES". These three are specific examples of (9,3) symmetric configurations. More generally an (n,r) configuration is a collection of n "points"and n "lines" subject to the following requirements:

Rl: Any two points belong to at most one line.

R2: Each line has r points, and each point belongs to r lines.

A New 12-Puzzle, Todd Estroff, Jeremiah Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This puzzle is a continuation of the tribute to the magician Paul Swinford. The following 18 two-letter words use each of the 12 letters of PAUL SWINFORD exactly three times each. The words are to be placed on the nodes of the grid so that each hexagon and each of the three diagonals contain the 12 letters of our honoree's name.

Paul Swinford – A Tribute, Jeremiah Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

No abstract provided.

The White Rabbit 12-Puzzle, Chris Morgan, Jeremiah Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Martin Gardner's fondness for the characters and themes of Lewis Carroll's "Alice" is well-known and to honor Gardner we offer two word puzzles to be played on the 12-node diagram of the WHITE RABBIT.

A Special Tribute To Martin Gardner, Jeremiah Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

There are exactly 12 different letters in the phrase GATHERING FOR MARTIN GARDNER. We use each of the 12 letters three times each in 18 different two-letter words that are to be placed on the nodes of the graph so adjoining nodes have a letter in common.

John Horton Conway: A Puzzle Game, Jeremiah Farrell, Karen Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

There are 10 different letters in the name JOHN HORTON CONWAY and we use each of these exactly three times each to form the following ten words: JHC, COW, NYC, JAN, RON, WRY, RAT, JOT, HWT, HAY.

The Seaborgium Chemical Table, Jeremiah Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The diagram is an example of a connected, cubic graph with its ten nodes labelled with the letters of SEABORGIUM, chemical element 106. Connected means it is in one piece and cubic means that each node has exactly three edges on it.

Some Curious Cut-Ups, Jeremiah Farrell, Ivan Moscovich

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

We have noticed a certain kind of n-gon dissection into triangles that has a wonderful property of interest to most puzzlists. Namely that any two triangles have at least one edge in common yet no two triangles need be congruent. In an informal poll of specialists at a recent convention, none of them saw immediately how this could be accomplished. But in fact it is very straightforward.

The Eight Monarchs (Some Mathematical Magic), Jeremiah Farrell, Eric Nelson

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The eight Monarchs are the four Kings and four Queens of an ordinary deck of cards. We can perform our magic without a deck by using the grid below with the K-Q token ( a coin can be used instead if one wishes).

The Effect: The magician's back will be turned while Mark, the subject, places the token on one of the suit nodes. Mark is to remember this starting position. Then Mark makes a sequence of moves; a move being one of four possibilities: a horizontal move, a vertical move, or a diagonal move to a new node or …

The Magic Octagon, Jeremiah Farrell, Tom Rodgers

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The black nodes mark the corners of an octagon and each of these nodes in connected to four others by lines. The (rather hard) puzzle is to assign the sixteen numbers 0 through 15 to each of the sixteen lines so that each black node has a sum of 30 when the line numbers leading into it are added.

The word version of the puzzle was described in the article "Most-Perfect Word Magic", Oscar Thumpbindle, Word Ways Vol. 40(4). Nov. 2007.

The Magic Octahedron, Jeremiah Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

An octahedral die has several advantages over its cubic cousin, not the least of which is its ability to magically model a four dimensional tesseract. We will use a four coloring of the die to illustrate the magic.

Octahedral Dice, Todd Estroff, Jeremiah Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

All five Platonic solids have been used as random number generators in games involving chance with the cube being the most popular. Martin Gardenr, in his article on dice (MG 1977) remarks: "Why cubical?... It is the easiest to make, its six sides accomodate a set of numbers neither too large nor too small, and it rolls easily enough but not too easily."

Gardner adds that the octahedron has been the next most popular as a randomizer. We offer here several problems and games using octahedral dice. The first two are extensions from Gardner's article. All answers will be given …