puzzles

Readers balanced logical reasoning and mathematical insights to find phony coins with a double-pan balance scale.

In recreational mathematics, the balance scale is an endless source of puzzles that require precise and elaborate logic and teach the fundamentals of generalization.

Four puzzle solutions reveal different ways to divine someone’s hidden number with impossibly little information.

Mathematical magic can seem like mind reading. Your job is to reveal the secret behind these four tricks.

Learn the magic and math of how to win games when your opponent goes first.

A surprising new solution to Leonhard Euler’s famous “36 officers puzzle” offers a novel way of encoding quantum information.

The solution to our puzzle about Euler’s number explains why e pops up in situations that involve optimality.

The transcendental number π is as familiar as it is ubiquitous, but how does Euler’s number e transcend the ordinary?

How readers used their geometry skills to survive a dangerous puzzle.