Some months ago I discussed the following problem with Steve Hewson and Mike Pearson after an NRICH meeting. Two people play a game with a finite graph. They take turns in colouring the uncoloured vertices of the graph, one vertex at a time. One player colours vertices red, and the other player colours vertices green. […]
The following problem was suggested by Bernard Murphy at Jenny Piggott’s retirement meeting in Cambridge on Tuesday 13 July. Problem Consider eight jacket buttons in a column, as shown on the left hand side of the image below. We can unbutton the eight buttons in various orders; one such order is shown on the right […]
How quickly can a number of people, each with an unlit candle, light their candles from a single lit candle? This problem presented itself during a service in St. Mary’s Church in Maynooth, Ireland, to which I was kindly invited on Holy Saturday (3 April 2010). The congregation were seated in a block, and each […]