[This is a back-issue of this website’s newsletter]
At the start of the year, I put up a game called math architect. This is an online game, where players have to design an apartm,ent building with a given area, using only square rooms.
At the time, I thought that the game would be good for offline play, too, for example as a series of classroom exercises. Now, I’ve put up a page explaining how to play math architect offline
This game – both the online and offline versions – challenge people to write a given number as a sum of square numbers. This is a puzzle that goes back a long way. For example, the fact that 3 squared plus 4 squared equals 5 squared was known to the ancient Egyptians. They knew ages before Pythagoras was born that a triangle whose sides were 3, 4 and 5 made a right triangle, and used this fact in their building.
In the past few times it has been proved that any number can be written as a sum of at most four different square numbers, with most numbers needing less than that. However, this doesn’t mean that the math architect game isn’t challenging! Try it and you’ll see.. 🙂