Unfortunately Ukraine has receded from our attention under the threat from our own anti-democratic forces, but this Monday Puzzle from Alex Bellos in March is a timely reminder of the mathematical significance of that country.

“Like many of you I’ve hardly been able to think about anything else these past ten days apart from the war in Ukraine. So today’s puzzles are a celebration of Lviv, Ukraine’s western city, which played an important role in the history of 20th century mathematics. During the 1930s, a remarkable group of scholars came up with new ideas, methods and theorems that helped shape the subject for decades.

The Lwów school of mathematics – at that time, the city was in Poland – was a closely-knit circle of Polish mathematicians, including Stefan Banach, Stanisław Ulam and Hugo Steinhaus, who made important contributions to areas including set-theory, topology and analysis. …

Of the many ideas introduced by the Lwów school, one of the best known is the “ham sandwich theorem,” posed by Steinhaus and solved by Banach using a result of Ulam’s. It states that it is possible to slice a ham sandwich in two with a single slice that cuts each slice of bread and the ham into two equal sizes, whatever the size and positions of the bread and the ham.

Today’s puzzles are also about dividing food. The first is from Hugo Steinhaus’ One Hundred Problems in Elementary Mathematics, published in 1938. The second uses a method involved in the proof of the ham sandwich theorem.

1. Three friends each contribute £4 to buy a £12 ham. The first friend divides it into three parts, asserting the weights are equal. The second friend, distrustful of the first, reweighs the pieces and judges them to be worth £3, £4 and £5. The third, distrustful of them both, weighs the ham on their own scales, getting another result. If each friend insists that their weighings are correct, how can they share the pieces (without cutting them anew) in such a way that each of them would have to admit they got at least £4 of ham?_
2. Ten plain and 14 seeded rolls are randomly arranged in a circle, equidistantly spaced, as below. Show that using a straight line it is possible to divide the circle into two halves such that there are an equal number of plain and seeded rolls on either side of the line.

Show there is always a diameter that cuts the circle into two batches of 12 rolls with an equal number of plain and seeded.

Question 2 is adapted from Mathematical Puzzles by Peter Winkler, who gives as a reference Alon and West, The Borsuk-Ulam Theorem and bisection of necklaces, Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society 98 (1986).”

See The Maths of Lviv

This is a fairly straight-forward logic puzzle from Alex Bellos’s Monday Puzzle in The Guardian.

“When it comes to the world of mathematical puzzles, Hungary is a superpower. Not just because of the Rubik’s cube, the iconic toy invented by Ernő Rubik in 1974, but also because of its long history of maths outreach.

In 1894, Hungary staged the world’s first maths competition for teenagers, four decades before one was held anywhere else. 1894 also saw the launch of KöMaL, a Hungarian maths journal for secondary school pupils full of problems and tips on how to solve them. Both the competition and the journal have been running continuously since then, with only brief hiatuses during the two world wars.

This emphasis on developing young talent means that Hungarians are always coming up with puzzles designed to stimulate a love of mathematics. (It also explains why Hungary arguably produces, per capita, more top mathematicians than any other country.)

I asked Béla Bajnok, a Hungarian who is now director of American Mathematics Competitions, a series of competitions involving 300,000 students in the US, whether he knew of any puzzles that originated in Hungary. The first thing he said that came to mind was the ‘3-D logic puzzle’, a type of logic puzzle in which you work out the solution in a three dimensional box, rather than (as is the case with the standard version) in a two-dimensional grid. He said he had never seen this type of puzzle outside Hungary.

Below are two examples he created. You could solve these using an extended two dimensional grid. It’s more in the spirit of the question, however, to draw a three-dimensional one, like you are looking at three sides of a Rubik’s Cube.

Date night

Andy, Bill, Chris, and Daniel are out tonight with their dates, Emily, Fran, Gina, and Huong. We have the following information.

1. Andy will go to the opera
2. Bill will spend the evening with Emily,
3. Chris would not want to go out with Gina,
4. Fran will see a movie
5. Gina will attend a workshop.

We also know that one couple will see an art exhibit. Who will go out with whom, and what will they do?”

See Date Night