Article: Most-perfect word magic.

Here is a rather hard puzzle. Assign the sixteen numbers 0 through 15 to the letters of OSCAR THUMPBINDLE so that the eight words BASH, BUMP, CLAD, CURE, HORN, MIND, PLOT, and SITE each sum to 30. There are 86 ways four of the sixteen numbers can sum to 30 and therein lies the puzzle's difficulty. However, we can make the puzzle almost trivial if we supply a diagram of a magic octagon as a guide. Notice that all of the figure's black nodes add up to 30 when one sums the numbered lines leading into each of them.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Using this octagon (adapted from "Supermagic and Antimagic Graphs", N. Hartsfield and G. Ringle, J. Rec. Math Vol. 21(2), ...

Related newspaper, magazine, and journal articles:

 
 
Newsweek Harper's Magazine The Washington Post Chicago Tribune Crain's Chicago Business PRNewswire Pediatric News The Nation Advertising Age The Economist (US) A FREE trial gives you access to over 80 million articles! Access over 6,500 publications with a FREE trial!