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For the love of puzzles

You are in a pub. The former maths teacher opposite you is playing with a hexaflexagon; the PhD student next to you is showing the statistician next to her how to pair up the wings on a 4×4×4 Rubik’s cube; and you have just worked out that a square based pyramid made with equilateral triangles (and a square) has twice the volume of a tetrahedron made with the same triangles.

Maybe this sounds too good to be true, but this happens. Monthly. And not just in London: Guildford, Sheffield, Cheltenham, Norwich, Dublin, New York, Bombay, Edinburgh and 28 more towns and cities play host to monthly pub maths.

The initiated will know that I am talking about MathsJam, started in 2008 by stand up mathematician Matt Parker as a place for mathematicians to meet and share puzzles. As everyone brings puzzles along from a wide range of sources, there is always something new and interesting. Continue reading

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£100 Prize Crossnumber, Issue 01

Our original £100 prize crossnumber is featured on pages 34 and 35 of Issue 01.

Rules

  • Although many of the clues have multiple answers, there is only one solution to the completed crossnumber. As usual, no numbers begin with 0.
  • One randomly selected correct answer will win £100. Three randomly selected runners up will win a Chalkdust pen. The prizes have been provided by G-Research, researchers
    of financial markets and investment ideas. Find out more at gresearch.co.uk.
  • To enter, email crossnumber@chalkdustmagazine.com with the sum of the across clues by 22 July 2015. Only one entry per person will be accepted. Winners will be notified by email by 1 August 2015.
  • Entry is now closed.

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