Beads in a Bracelet
We have a bracelet made of yellow and green beads, and we want to divide each coloured beads evenly among friends with the least number of cuts.
Finding Paths
In this 4x4 grid, if we choose two squares, for which pairs of squares can we find a path from one square to the other, moving only vertically or horizontally at each step, and visiting every square in the grid exactly once?
Nonlinear Arrangements
Here’s an arrangement of the numbers 1 to 4, and what it looks like plotted into a 4x4 grid such that each row corresponds to a number in the arrangement. Notice that the 3 dots on the bottom right form a straight line.
Jumping Tiles
In the following puzzle, each number indicates the distance (vertically, horizontally, or a combination of both) this tile needs to move. A solution is a rearrangement of all the tiles in the grid that satisfies all the numbers where none of the tiles overlap.
Tiling with Rods
The original problem asks for a combination of 1x2 and 1x3 rods that can tile a 5x5 square. Tiling problems have a tendency to get complicated quickly, so let’s start small.
Variants of Sudoku
Today let’s explore one of the deviations from the standard sudoku rules that every row, column, and subgrid (excluded so we can generalize to non-perfect-square side lengths) must have exactly one of each number from 1 to n, where n is the side length of the sudoku puzzle. Let’s include the new rule that a valid solution to a sudoku puzzle must also have one of each number in each of its two diagonals.
Mini Sudoku
Sudoku is a one-player game where the player tries to fill the spaces of an nxn grid using numbers 1 to n, where n is a natural number, such that every column and every row contains exactly one of each number.
Numbers of Polycubes
Let’s define polycubes as three dimensional shapes made up of unit cubes connected by shared faces.
Tiling with Polynominoes
Let’s consider tiling square grids using polynominoes of any number of units.
Perimeters of Polynominoes
If we separate all tetrominoes according to their perimeters, we would have two groups.