Course: An Introduction to Recreational Math: Fun, Games, and Puzzles

One of John Conway’s famous quotations is “I Hate Life!”. In the following series of interviews with Numberphile’s Brady Haran, Conway explains why – and how he invented the game. …

This video explains all the rules needed to explain the Game of Life. Once you’ve watched the video you can play life on one of the online Life simulators. It …

John Conway is a world-renown mathematician, who was born in Liverpool, England in 1937. He particularly enjoyed inventing all kinds of fun math games; one of the most famous of …

Wild tic-tac-toe is my favourite variation on tic-tac-toe. Instead of one player always drawing ‘X’ and the other ‘O’, each player can draw whatever he chooses on his turn – …

One of the most playful things you can do with games is to change the rules. One of the first rule-changing plays is called misère play or misère games. In …

Tic-tac-toe, or, as it is known in England, Noughts and Crosses, is an intriguing game. The rules are quite simple. The first player is ‘X’. The second ‘O’ and they …

Nim is a really fascinating game. Now for some of the math behind it… The solution to the 1,2,3 one pile Nim game Here is the answer to the 1,2,3 …

Hopefully, you’ve watched the video and now understand what Nim is, but if you still have some questions, you can post them in the comments and we will try and …

‘Mathematical Games’ was the name that Martin Gardner chose for his Scientific American column, even though recreational math is much more than game theory, as we have seen during this …

Can you uncover the secret behind Yossi’s lightning calculator magic trick? Post your ideas below! The correct answer will be disclosed in the weekly email…

I’m hooked on Sudoku! Nearly every day I try and solve at least one. I’m sure some of you are too. It is very hard to say exactly when Sudoku …

Secret codes are exciting! From the dawn of mankind to seconds ago, from scouts to intelligence agencies, everyone has been using them. The mathematical study of secret codes is called …

I recommend reading this before watching the video… What are cryptarithms? Cryptarithms, sometimes known as alphametics, are puzzles where you are given an arithmetical expression where the digits have been …

Raymond Smullyan, one of the worlds important logicians and also a formidable recreational mathematician, magician and pianist was born in New York 1919. In fact, he started out as a …

This video shows some mechanical puzzles that represent Jerry Slocum’s classification. If you have a chance I urge you to visit personally or virtually The Jerry Slocum Mechanical Puzzle Collection …