#ThisWeeksFiddler, 20260327
This week the #puzzle is: Can You Pile the Primes? #primes #coding #BruteForce #oeis #subsets Suppose you want to make two groups with equal sums using the first N2 prime numbers. What is the smallest value of N2 for which you can do this? The answer is three! (Clearly, that wasn’t actually the puzzle.) The […]

https://stuff.ommadawn.dk/2026/03/31/thisweeksfiddler-20260327/

#ThisWeeksFiddler, 20260320
This week the #puzzle is: Can You Trace the Locus? #geometry #area #coding I have a loop of string whose total length is 10. I place it around a unit disk (i.e., with radius 1) and pull a point on the string away from the disk until the string is taut, as shown below. I […]

https://stuff.ommadawn.dk/2026/03/24/thisweeksfiddler-20260320/

#ThisWeeksFiddler, 20260313
This week the #puzzle is: Can You or “Cantor” You Find the Distance? #probabilities #infinity #coding #montecarlo #permutations #distance I start with a number line from 0 to 1, and then I remove the middle third. Then I take each of my remaining pieces (the segment from 0 to 1/3 and the segment from 2/3 […]

https://stuff.ommadawn.dk/2026/03/17/thisweeksfiddler-20260313/

#ThisWeeksFiddler, 20260306
This week the #puzzle is: Can You Shovel the Snow? #geometry #area #equidistant #probabilities #coding #montecarlo Two teams of shovelers plan to remove all the snow from a parking lot that’s shaped like a regular hexagon. Team Vertex initially places each of its six shovelers at the six corners of the lot. Meanwhile, Team Centroid […]

https://stuff.ommadawn.dk/2026/03/10/thisweeksfiddler-20260306/

#ThisWeeksFiddler, 20260227
This week the #puzzle is: Can Every Day Be First? #calendars #patterns In 2026, every day of the week is the first day of the month at least once: – Monday is June 1.– Tuesday is September 1 and December 1.– Wednesday is April 1 and July 1.– Thursday is January 1 and October 1.– […]

https://stuff.ommadawn.dk/2026/03/03/thisweeksfiddler-20260227/

#ThisWeeksFiddler, 20260220
This week the #puzzle is: Can the Archers Coordinate? #probabilities Two logicians are trying to earn a fabulous prize as a team. There are three targets, and, to win the prize, each logician must fire a single arrow and hit the same target as the other. Two of the targets are closer but are otherwise […]

https://stuff.ommadawn.dk/2026/02/24/thisweeksfiddler-20260220/

#ThisWeeksFiddler, 20260213
This week the #puzzle is: Can You Get the Rover Home? #trigonometry #spherical #3d #animation #desmos3d A rover is dropped down on a spherical planet with a radius of 1000 miles. The rover has been programmed with a very specific set of motions: – First, it moves straight forward a fixed distance s, and stops.– […]

https://stuff.ommadawn.dk/2026/02/17/thisweeksfiddler-20260213/

#ThisWeeksFiddler, 20260206
This week the #puzzle is: How Long Is the All-Star Streak? #math #probabilities #InfiniteSums #coding #MonteCarlo The Fiddler Basketball Association’s All-Star Game consists of two teams: “East” and “West.” Every year these two teams play a game, each with a 50 percent chance of winning that’s independent of the outcomes of previous years. Many, many […]

https://stuff.ommadawn.dk/2026/02/10/thisweeksfiddler-20260206/

#ThisWeeksFiddler, 20260130
This week the #puzzle is: Can You Hop in a Spiral? #geometry #trigonometry #angle #arctan #minimize #markovchain #coding Frankie the frog is hopping on a large, packed grid of lily pads, shown below. The pads are circular and each is a distance 1 from its nearest neighbors. (More concretely: Each pad has a diameter of […]

https://stuff.ommadawn.dk/2026/02/03/thisweeksfiddler-20260130/

#ThisWeeksFiddler, 20260123
This week the #puzzle is: Bingo! #statistics #probabilities #combinatorics #counting #coding #program #montecarlo A game of bingo typically consists of a 5-by-5 grid with 25 total squares. Each square (except for the center square) contains a number. When a square’s number is called, you place a marker on that square. The goal is to get […]

https://stuff.ommadawn.dk/2026/01/27/thisweeksfiddler-20260123/