Archive for category: Puzzles

Code for generating a random Latin square…

May 17, 2016 | Games and Diversions, My Projects, Puzzles | By: Mark VandeWettering

The other day I mentioned that generating random Latin squares was a bit more complicated than I thought, and that an algorithm by Jacobson and Matthews was the way that people typically did it. I worked up this implementation based on a couple of different descriptions of the algorithm (the original paper was behind a […]

Atinlay Aresquares…

May 16, 2016 | Games and Diversions, Puzzles | By: Mark VandeWettering

My last post dealt with a solver for KenKen puzzles. Once you have one of those, then the obvious thing to work on next (in your copious spare time) is a generator for KenKen puzzles. It didn’t seem too hard. You’d begin by generating a random Latin square, then divide it up into “cages”, assign […]

KenKen puzzle solver…

May 12, 2016 | Computer Science, Games and Diversions, My Projects, Puzzles | By: Mark VandeWettering

Lately, my lunch hours have been spent working on the NYT Crossword with my lunch companion Tom. While I find that the Thursday crosswords are often beyond my ability to do in the allotted time, between the two of us, more often than not we manage to plow through them. Slowly over time, we’ve begun […]

A nifty partition of 1..16

November 15, 2011 | Math, Puzzles | By: Mark VandeWettering

Courtesy of Phil Harvey’s Puzzle « Programming Praxis, I discovered that the numbers from 1..16 can be partitioned into two 8 element sets, with these nifty identities! 2+3+5+8+9+12+14+15 == 1+4+6+7+10+11+13+16 22+32+52+82+92+122+142+152 == 12+42+62+72+102+112+132+162 23+33+53+83+93+123+143+153 == 13+43+63+73+103+113+133+163 There has to be a good way to use this to make a cool geometric puzzle as well.\ Bonus: […]

Word squares…

May 4, 2011 | Computer Science, My Projects, Puzzles | By: Mark VandeWettering

I like to read the Programming Praxis website. Every post challenges you to write some simple programs to boost your skill, akin to finger exercises for a musical instrument. Today’s challenge was an interesting which intrigued Charles Babbage: creating word squares. I spent about 10 minutes writing one in Python that worked rather well: here […]

Cool Link on Maze Generation, with Minecraft Application

April 11, 2011 | Games and Diversions, Puzzles | By: Mark VandeWettering

Josh read my earlier article on maze generation, and forwarded me to this cool link via Twitter. It’s an article by Jamis Buck, and details all sorts of cool ways to generate mazes, with examples, applets, discussion… It’s simply great. It even includes an online maze generator for constructing random mazes suitable for construction in […]

Revisiting a Program from the Past: Maze Generation

April 8, 2011 | Games and Diversions, My Projects, Puzzles | By: Mark VandeWettering

I was playing Minecraft with a few like-minded people the other day, and grew weary of excavating huge, deep holes and falling into lava pits. So, I decided to create my own little island reserve. I scouted a likely location: a small insignificant island off the coast from our main base and began construction. Once […]

The Mathemagician and Pied Puzzler, and others | MetaFilter

September 25, 2009 | Math, Puzzles | By: Mark VandeWettering

This metafilter post has a link to several interesting recreational and math puzzle books available as downloads. Very cool. The Mathemagician and Pied Puzzler, and others | MetaFilter.

A simple, short puzzle

August 24, 2009 | Puzzles | By: Mark VandeWettering

Here is a simple puzzle that came from Martin Gardner’s The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems. Here we see ten circles arranged in the classic triangle bowling configuration. The question is “what is the minimum number of circles that can be removed such that there is no equilateral triangle formed by the centers […]