I have posted the solution for The Pirate Puzzle. After writing it, I discovered that the puzzle is actually a well-established part of the recreational mathematics canon, a fact that I had not been aware of. However, there are some important differences between my formulation and the way that the puzzle is generally stated, as I discuss at the end of the solution page.
While working on part two of the Pointless article, I wandered over to Twitter and stumbled upon the following problem:
Can a perfect square ever consist of the same string of digits written out twice (such as in 978978 or 46024602)? cc @jamestanton
— Matt Enlow (@CmonMattTHINK) December 4, 2014
This caught my imagination and I did a bit of an investigation. The results were unexpectedly interesting, involving a connection to a mysterious problem at the cutting edge of number theory and a trip off into the numerical stratosphere in search of some fairly large solutions.
You can read my account of the problem here. The maths used here is probably about first year undergraduate level, and the style is certainly more technical than the Pointless article, so come prepared.
I have now put the first puzzle on the Puzzles page. Nothing too difficult to start off with and no maths required*, but one of my favourites nonetheless. Have a go.
* Unless you count very basic arithmetic.
I put some text on the Puzzles page today. No actual puzzles yet, but the first one is pretty much ready to go. I’ll probably publish it on Monday.
I also have a couple more pages on my audio plays that are almost complete. One of those will go up this week too.