By Geeks out of the Box Posted on

More Puzzles from Maths Is Fun

In an earlier post, I have mentioned that for many games he programs Simon got his inspiration from the site Maths Is Fun. Perhaps I should add that at our home, Maths Is Fun has become an endless source of fun word problems, too! The problem below has been our favourite this week:

Simon’s equations to solve the problem
Simon has developed a system to show the relation between the actual time a and time m that a mirrored clock would show: m = 12 – a
Another clock puzzle from Maths Is Fun
Simon’s solution
solving this during his evening tea

Some of the puzzles Simon likes to recreate with paper and scissors rather than program:

A version of Connect 4 but this time with the tables of multiplication! Every player is only allowed to move one paper triangle at a time (the triangles indicate which two numbers one can use to get the next product in the table). The one who colours four products in a row wins.
As the game progresses it gets trickier
For the jug puzzle game, Simon has developed a graph plotting the winning strategy (analogous to what he once saw Mathologer do for another game).
Double-sided numbers, sort of a two-dimensional cellular automaton. The objective is to get to a state when all the numbers would be one colour. The rule: if a cell changes its colour, its four neighbours (not diagonal) also change colour. There’re also other versions of this puzzle with more difficult initial conditions.
A number-guessing game based on binary representation. When he was 8 years old, Simon programmed a similar trick in Processing. He also developed the same sort of trick for base 3 numbers.

Simon and Neva have also especially liked the Tricky Puzzles section (puzzles containing jokes).

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