There was a time when I could definitely beat my own kids at a game. Whether it’s chess or cards or my favourite, exploding kitten, I was able to sit confidently in my own prowess. Sadly, those days are gone. My kids are now in their teens, and the chances that I can outsmart them are surprisingly rare.
My children have the advantage of being an agile youth. But I’m the only one in my family who’s familiar with quantum physics. As demonstrated by this year’s Nobel laureate in physics, it’s a notoriously strange world where objects seem to communicate instantaneously, regardless of distance, through a phenomenon called entanglement. I’ve now discovered some games where my knowledge of quantum mechanics has an edge. Maybe a little more exotic than snakes and ladders. Quantum computers may be required to play properly. But did I say I really, really want to beat my kids?
My first discovery was a puzzle set by mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1779. He imagined a group of his 36 army officers, each assigned to one of his six ranks and he to one of six different colored regiments. Can he arrange these officers in a 6×6 grid so that the regiments and ranks are not repeated in rows and columns?
I watch my family struggle before sneakily announcing that it is impossible. In the 1960s, mathematicians, although they had a solution…
