Posts Tagged ‘magic squares’

Finally, a Magic Magic 45-omino

January 14th, 2017

In the figure below, the numbers in each row, column, and main diagonal sum to 115:

Quite a long time ago, I came up with the idea of representing the lo shu (3×3 magic square) as a set of squares in a 9×9 grid, partitioned into nine 3×3 cells. The number of squares in each cell would correspond to a number in the lo shu. The most “magic” way to arrange the cells would seem to be to have 5 squares in the set in each row, column, and main diagonal. (This can be done because the lo shu’s magic sum of 15 can be divided among three rows or columns.) Although it doesn’t affect the “magicality” of a figure, I thought it aesthetically desirable for such a figure to be connected (i.e., a single polyomino) and hole-free. There are 12 hole-free magic 45-ominoes, if my code for discovering them is correct.

A figure with the same number of squares in each row, column, and main diagonal makes an ideal canvas for a sparse magic square. But with 45 numbers to place, and 20 constraints to meet, we start to push on the edge of what’s computationally feasible. The solver I wrote (which, I admit, might not have been very good) could not find a solution. Bryce Herdt manually tweaked the output of my solver to make a semimagic solution, that is, one where the rows and columns add to the magic sum, but the diagonals still didn’t work.

When I discovered that the Numberjack constraint engine could easily be used to code solvers for magic figures, I tried it on this problem, but got nowhere. The solver would run for an arbitrarily long period of time without spitting out any solutions. Recently I tried it again, and this time I got solutions. Paradoxically, what made the problem easier to solve was that I added more constraints. I manually placed the numbers 1 through 9 in the 3×3 cells that they correspond to. This seems to have made the search space small enough that the solver would not be able to spend an inordinate amount of time stuck in a barren zone.

Faux Shu Follies

June 18th, 2016

lo shu

The Lo Shu, or 3×3 magic square, was discovered in China in antiquity. It is the only way, (up to symmetry) to place the numbers 1 through 9 in a 3×3 grid such that the numbers in each row, column, and main diagonal add up to the same number (or magic sum). This fact seems to be universally known among recreational mathematicians. So when I had the chance to meet a number of them this spring at the fabulous 12th Gathering for Gardner conference, I told them that I knew a different way to do it. When they pronounced me mad, or a liar, I showed them one of these:

show few faux shu

Mathematics is full of counterexamples that result when the simple way of understanding a conjecture is not exactly what the conjecture literally says, so this kind of cheating is totes legit.

If the fact of the uniqueness of the Lo Shu is new to you, a quick proof might be in order. First, let’s enumerate all of the sets of three numbers between 1 and 9 that sum to 15: {1, 5, 9}, {1, 6, 8}, {2, 4, 9}, {2, 5, 8}, {2, 6, 7}, {3, 4, 8}, {3, 5, 7}, {4, 5, 6}. There are eight sets, so we’ll need all of them to fill the eight lines in the magic square. The number 5 appears four times, the other odd numbers appear twice, and the even numbers appear three times. Therefore the center square, being part of four lines, must be 5, the corner squares, being part of three lines, must be the evens, and the side squares, being part of two lines, must be the other odds. Choose any corner, and put a 2 in it. That forces 8 into the opposite corner. Choose one the remaining corners, and put a 4 in it. After that, the rest of the numbers are forced. No matter what corners you choose, the result can be rotated or flipped to get the square formed by choosing any different pair of corners. Q. E. D.

Well, wait, you say, what if the magic sum isn’t 15? Quite right, 14 and 16 also both have eight sets of numbers between 1 and 9 that sum to them, so our proof is not done. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to show that they cannot be used to form a 3×3 magic square.

And then, once the reader is satisfied, I’ll say: there is a way to place the numbers 1 through 9 in a 3×3 grid, with exactly one number in each cell, (you didn’t think I’d try the same shenanigans twice?) so that they occupy eight lines that each connect exactly three numbers that sum to 14. And having followed me this far, you are now enough of a recreational mathematician to be able to call me mad, or a liar. But you might want to have a look at this before you wager money on it:

d'oh shu

This result was adapted from one discovered by Lee Sallows, which is described in his book, Geometric Magic Squares.

Well, clearly the problem here is that you’re allowing me to draw my own graphics. If you forced me to use physical number tiles as in the first image, I couldn’t get up to any fancy tricks. So if I told you that I could arrange those exact same nine number tiles in a block of three rows of three tiles each, and make it so that for every line that passes through the center of three tiles that form a connected group, the sum of those tiles is 14, I would have to be mad.

this is not the cabbage water

Mad as a loon.

This is how I roll: Magic dice, part 1

March 29th, 2015







A Magic Dart Puzzle

April 16th, 2014

Recently I was looking at the following figure, in the context of trying to find useful configurations to make crossed stick puzzles with:


Now, a four piece crossed stick puzzle seems likely to be rather trivial to solve, but it sparked a question: could there be a good, non-trivial puzzle that uses this dart configuration? I recalled that I had in the past made such a figure with craft popsicle sticks:


This assemblage of sticks suggests some sort of puzzle where there will be some figures printed on the sticks at the intersections between the pieces, and there will be some goal concerning the figures that are showing on the sticks that are on top at the intersections. With four sticks, there are 4! permutations of the sticks, and if each stick can be flipped over or rotated 180°, there are 4!·44 = 6144 possible arrangements of the sticks. (Because we can flip over the entire assembly, there are only half as many physical arrangements of the sticks, but it seems reasonable to consider either side of an assembly to represent a different arrangement, since we will probably want a goal for the puzzle that is only concerned with what is visible on one side.)

In the crossed stick puzzles that I have looked at thus far, the only sites that vary have been the intersections between pieces. However, if we allow rotating the pieces, there will be sites that can either be at intersections or not, depending on how the piece is rotated.


I first toyed with using colored marks at the variable sites, possibly with holes in the pieces that could reveal the color of the piece behind it. However, I made more progress when I turned to the idea of putting numbers at the sites. Since there are eight sites on the two sides of a piece, I thought of putting each number between 1 and 8 on one of them. This suggested to me a puzzle along the lines of a magic square, where the goal would be to make a figure where the sums along the four lines all matched. I noticed that there are exactly four ways to partition the numbers 1 to 8 into two sets of four, such that each set has the same sum (18):

1 2 7 8 | 3 4 5 6 
1 3 6 8 | 2 4 5 7 
1 4 5 8 | 2 3 6 7
1 4 6 7 | 2 3 5 8

That would give me an elegant way to place numbers on each side of the four pieces, but I still needed to find a way to arrange the numbers. The simplest way would be to place them in order from smallest to largest. I wrote a short Python program to output the solutions. Unfortunately, there weren’t any! After that I tried other orderings. (Note: due to a bug in my program, what I previously had here was incorrect.) If we number the sites from smallest to largest as 0 through 3, ordering the sites as [0, 2, 3, 1] gives a single unigue solution:


Ordering the sites as [0, 3, 1, 2] gives four solutions with a magic sum of 18, and four solutions with a magic sum of 17. Notice that magic figures like this have a numerical “reflection” symmetry. Given a solution, you can generally obtain another by replacing every numeral n with 9 – n. This means that the orderings [2, 3, 0, 1] and [3, 0, 2, 1] will behave basically like the orderings mentioned above. Other distinct orderings with solutions are [0, 1, 3, 2] (7 solutions), and [1, 0, 3, 2] (2 solutions).

I’ve only started looking into how I could physically produce such a puzzle. Custom printed and die cut PVC looks promising; I think the marginal cost of a piece would come to under 10¢; the real problem would be in the setup cost, and in the unlikelihood of minimum orders of less than 500 for each piece being feasable.

As an aside, once I was looking at those partitions of the integers 1-8 into eight subsets with equal sums, the obvious thing to do with them was to make a 4×4 “magic square” where each of the subsets occurs once as a row or column. Here’s one where the diagonals also have a sum of 18:

magic square of partitioned subsets

This seems like the sort of idea that would have to have been looked at before, but I have no idea how to find out where it may have been previously discussed.﻿

A Semimagic Magic 45-omino

March 1st, 2011

Bryce Herdt has found a solution to problem #21:





