iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

The little-known sport of extreme puzzling held its premier tournament this weekend in Hungary. The annual 24 Hour Puzzle Championship is a physical and intellectual endurance event in which contestants from around the world solve puzzles non-stop from 10am on Saturday to 10am on Sunday.

“I have no idea why puzzlers from all over the world like this crazy championship,” said Gyorgy Istvan, one of this year’s organisers. “But it’s been going for 19 years. I guess it is because in each sport the top players like to test their skills in extreme ways.”

Nikola Zivanovic from Serbia came first this year out of a field of 32 contestants from 14 different countries. Neil Zussman from the UK was runner-up.

Today’s four puzzles are taken from the championship’s archive. I hope they give you a flavour of the kind of problems attempted at elite puzzle tournaments.

Hi guzzlers,

Wednesday is Pi Day, an annual date of celebration in the mathematical community because March 14, or 3/14, using the US convention for dates, looks like 3.14, which is pi to two decimal places.

Pi - usually written as the Greek letter π - is the ‘circle constant’. Take any circle you like. Whatever the size, the ratio of its circumference to its diameter is pi. If you want to know more about this numerical marvel, please scroll down. But first, today’s three puzzles.

"A fascination with cryptography led high school math teacher Paul Kelley to develop a way to use the code-building practice to explain algebraic concepts to students at Anoka High School in Anoka, Minnesota. Kelley wanted to tap into ways math is used in everyday life — places where students would never give it a second thought — to spark their interest so they would stop asking how they would “use this stuff,” he said in an interview.

“I showed them, for example, how cryptography gets the credit card numbers from their computers to Amazon without the bad guys intercepting it, and all the mathematics that go into it,” said Kelley."