Double Maths First Thing has been blown away by a puzzle

Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread the joy and delight in mathematical thinking, in figuring things out, and in doing things that make you feel clever.

Such as – I’m indebted to Miles Gould for encouraging me to dig deeper – The Guardian’s 30,000th cryptic crossword. My dad and my Uncle Bill got me into crosswords as a teenager, and I’ve been tackling the Guardian’s puzzle perhaps as many days as not for the last few decades. I’m not going to spoiler it for you, but I think I can safely reveal that it involves a message they’ve been drip-feeding hidden in plain sight for nearly 18 months, and a final boss with a mic drop that made me grin and cry a little bit.

That’s the sort of feeling I’m trying to spread. Glorious, glorious work.

Links

I’m a fan of proofs without works [Edit 2026-05-20: I meant to write “words” but I also like proofs without works]. Arnaldo Gunzi and Ernée Kozyreff Filho are fans of proof by cardboard. It’s always a treat to see maths made tangible – these are the sorts of things you might see at MathsWorld.

Following on from the puzzles and games from last week, Mair pointed me at another Truchet prototype – it’s a bit hard to make out what’s going on, even from the paper, but I think they’re trying to show that you can’t make a loop of more than 14 tiles out of the 16 in a particular group.

“Select your chess pieces. The app will then place them one by one on an infinite board. The engine follows a spiral path from the center, and each piece is dropped on the first square where it can fit without being captured by any piece of another colour.” I love when simple rules lead to absolute – and I use the word advisedly – chaos.

Ele Willoughby, PhD makes gorgeous lino block prints with scientific themes: this Russell’s Teapot is part of her Imaginary Friends of Science series, and she routinely posts about the birthdays of remarkable women in science.

I was sure I’d mentioned the Bulgarian solitaire before, but a search doesn’t reveal anything. Maybe you should play it?

Currently

If you happen to be in on near London, Somerset House has an MC Escher exhibition running from June 5th to September 6th. If you don’t happen to be in or near London, it’ll still be there, just you’re less likely to be interested.

Also in London, there’s An Evening Of Unnecessary Detail in Greenwich on Monday June 15th from 6:30pm UK time. Looks good, but needs more Pseudorandom Ensemble.

An occasional reminder that Christian Lawson-Perfect and Clare Wallace are running the Beach Spectres weekend in Whitley Bay on the 6th and 7th of June – send me pictures if you go!

A date in the distant future for your diaries: TMiP 2027 will be in Leeds, 26th-28th August. That’s next year, not this year. One of the best conferences around, that is.

As always, you want to join the Finite Group and get distracted in its Discord, and you want to submit interesting maths links to the Carnival so that Fractal Kitty can assemble them into an amazing post.

That’s all I’ve got for this week. If you have friends and/or colleagues who would enjoy Double Maths First Thing, do send them the link to sign up – they’ll be very welcome here.

If you’ve missed the previous issues of DMFT or – somehow – this one, you can find the archive courtesy of my dear friends at the Aperiodical.

Meanwhile, if there’s something I should know about, you can find me on Mathstodon as @icecolbeveridge, or at my personal website. You can also just reply to this email if there’s something you want to tell me.

Until next time,

C

Edited 2025-05-20 to fix a typo. Thanks, Mair!