The Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects

Jennifer Beineke is professor of mathematics at Western New England University. Jason Rosenhouse is professor of mathematics at James Madison University. He is the author of The Monty Hall Problem and the coauthor of Taking Sudoku Seriously.

Foreword by Raymond Smullyan vii Preface and Acknowledgments x PART I VIGNETTES 1 Should You Be Happy? 3 Peter Winkler 2 One-Move Puzzles with Mathematical Content 11 Anany Levitin 3 Minimalist Approaches to Figurative Maze Design 29 Robert Bosch, Tim Chartier, and Michael Rowan 4 Some ABCs of Graphs and Games 43 Jennifer Beineke and Lowell Beineke PART II PROBLEMS INSPIRED BY CLASSIC PUZZLES 5 Solving the Tower of Hanoi with Random Moves 65 Max A. Alekseyev and Toby Berger 6 Groups Associated to Tetraflexagons 81 Julie Beier and Carolyn Yackel 7 Parallel Weighings of Coins 95 Tanya Khovanova 8 Analysis of Crossword Puzzle Difficulty Using a Random Graph Process 105 John K. McSweeney 9 From the Outside In: Solving Generalizations of the Slothouber-Graatsma-Conway Puzzle 127 Derek Smith PART III PLAYING CARDS 10 Gallia Est Omnis Divisa in Partes Quattuor 139 Neil Calkin and Colm Mulcahy 11 Heartless Poker 149 Dominic Lanphier and Laura Taalman 12 An Introduction to Gilbreath Numbers 163 Robert W. Vallin PART IV GAMES 13 Tic-tac-toe on Affine Planes 175 Maureen T. Carroll and Steven T. Dougherty 14 Error Detection and Correction Using SET 199 Gary Gordon and Elizabeth McMahon 15 Connection Games and Sperner's Lemma 213 David Molnar PART V FIBONACCI NUMBERS 16 The Cookie Monster Problem 231 Leigh Marie Braswell and Tanya Khovanova 17 Representing Numbers Using Fibonacci Variants 245 Stephen K. Lucas About the Editors 261 About the Contributors 263 Index 269