Mathematical Riddles

The book was comprised mostly of very tricky problems that involved math. In the introduction, the author, Ian, discussed how he had a notebook of fun math problems, not boring math lessons. Actually, the math riddles and interesting puzzles are what make me like math a bit, since school math that is being forced into our brains only create a lot of stress. Fun math problems, on the other hand, lessens stress and induces the person to think about it more since there is that strong curiosity to know whether you solved the problem correctly or not.

The only ones I took note of were those that I liked a lot. I didn’t like ALL of the problems; only just a few, those that did not need too much thinking. The first favorite was the one about the string, tied in a loop and looped around the fingers, yet when pulled away, will not get entangled with the fingers. I remember doing this when I was still in grade school, and being the only one who knew about the trick, I was quite popular.

Another problem was about the color maps. I didn't know that there was a way to color maps, wherein no to adjacent states/cities will have the same color. The truth is, whenever I color maps, I also try to prevent having adjacent states have the same color. The problem about the farmer, goat, wolf and cabbages returned from my childhood. I tried to answer it again, and yep, I still remember how to solve the problem.

I also remember the one about the cherry in the matchstick, because the geometry group incorporated into their games. There was also one about making a pentagon from a rectangle strip, and apparently the way to do it was to tie it into a knot. There was also that one problem that involved trying to tie a knot with a string attached to both hands, without letting go. It took me around 20 minutes to fiddle with it, and up until now I have no idea of how to do it.

There was a problem involving a knight's move in a chess game. I lasted like 15 minutes trying to get the knight to step on all squares of a 5 x 5 chess board only once. I was really determined to find the answer, but in the end, I looked up the answer key. I nearly ripped my scratch papers when the author said that it was impossible. Thank you so much Mr. Stewart, thank you. Anyway, after a minute of composing myself, I found another particular problem about a cat in a heron's suit. There were 5 sentences, each pertaining to different cats. The first sentence went 'No cat in a heron's suit is unsociable' or something like that. It was just like the topic for our exam in philosophy, wherein we tried to prove whether a statement was true or false. In the end, I got it wrong. I then concluded that I was not ready for our exam in philosophy.

The bridges of Konigsberg appeared again, and the reason why it was quite familiar to me was because it appeared in the story of maths. I actually skipped that question because I knew that there was no answer, and we learned about in one of our classes in Math 1. Each bridge, when all paths have been traced, should have an even number of possible paths. If not, then crossing them all in one go will be impossible. Apparently, there were odd numbers of paths, so it was impossible to do the activity.

I also learned of how to make pythagorean triples (3 numbers that can be the sides of a right triangle). Apparently, all you have to do is get 2 consecutive whole numbers. Then, get twice the product. That is the first number in the triple. The second number is obtained by getting the difference of their squares, and the third by adding the squares of the numbers. I tried it, and yep, it does work. Now I can create my own pythagorean triples.

My most favorite on was probably about how to connect appliances without crossing the wires. The figured forced me into thinking that it was hard, and I spent around 20 minutes trying to get it right. The problem with my solution was that I was using straight lines instead of curved ones, like real wires. I totally laughed at myself when I saw the answer.

There was also that one activity where it showed us how to make a cone rolling upwards. I remembered thisi when I was a kid, I think a teacher showed it to us, and I was simply stunned. I had this strong urge to try doing it, but there was not much time to do so. The trick was the illusion it created. It seemed to be rolling upward, but when the center path is traced, it was still actually obeying gravity. And all along I thought it was real.

All in all, the book was great for wasting some time, when you have nothing to do. I especially enjoyed the ones that involved topological problems, since I really get to stand up end experiment the problems on my own. It also reminded me of what my third year high school teacher made us do. She instructed us to fit our entire bodies through a 1/4 piece of intermediate paper. It was really tedious, because no matter what we did, we could not fit. But in the end, we were able to find the solution and ended up laughing at how simple the way was.

I liked how Ian Stewart had collected all the fun riddles into one book. Maybe, during my free time in the summer, I would answer more of his math riddles.