Author Archives: apgoucher

Liquid mirror telescopes

Posted on May 28, 2014 by apgoucher

Breaking news: Following the selection process at Oundle, the UK IMO team has now been selected. It comprises Gabriel Gendler, Frank Han, Freddie Illingworth, Warren Li, Harvey Yau and Joe Benton. It is very worrying that two of these people belonged to … Continue reading →

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Meteor shower

Posted on May 24, 2014 by apgoucher

Here’s a metaphorical meteor shower of recent news worth mentioning: The meteor shower associated with the debris of the 209P/LINEAR comet peaked in intensity last night. Apparently it wasn’t as impressive as anticipated. Alexey Nigin has discovered a 12-face golyhedron. … Continue reading →

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Cipher 68: Conjugation

Posted on May 20, 2014 by apgoucher

I have become aware of several brute-force dictionary attacks on cp4space password-protected areas. As such, this password will most certainly not be in the dictionary, and thus a brute force search would require testing 8 031 810 176 different lower-case … Continue reading →

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Cipher 67: Dyslexic philosopher

Posted on May 16, 2014 by apgoucher

This multi-stage cipher was considerably difficult to design; indeed, the encrypted message had several fortunate properties. Anyway, firstly we have a bunch of crossword-style clues: Secondly, here is a grid of digits: And here is the third and final stage: sqrt(N) … Continue reading →

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Golyhedron update

Posted on May 11, 2014 by apgoucher

Alexey Nigin has discovered a 15-face golyhedron, a vast improvement on my 32-face example. The optimisation was effected by the idea to only have a single club foot, and merely truncate the other end.   The smallest golyhedron therefore has … Continue reading →

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Noughts and Crosses

Posted on May 8, 2014 by apgoucher

Firstly, the results for the Balkan Mathematical Olympiad have been published. Consequently, the preliminary UK IMO squad is now larger than ever before, comprising ten people (six team members and four reserves, in some indeterminate order). You are probably aware of … Continue reading →

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Golygons and golyhedra

Posted on April 30, 2014 by apgoucher

A most delightful way to procrastinate is to attempt the unsolved problems on MathOverflow. Especially rewarding is when you actually end up solving such a problem, or when you learn something in the process, or both. Last night I learnt … Continue reading →

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Orchestral biography of Turing

Posted on April 25, 2014 by apgoucher

Whilst submerged beneath several blankets in my morning hypnopompia, I was awakened by the Today programme on Radio 4. Specifically, I heard news that the Pet Shop Boys are due to perform an orchestral biography of the mathematician and cryptanalyst … Continue reading →

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Cipher 66: Hash inversion

Posted on April 21, 2014 by apgoucher

Yes, this is designed to be deliberately difficult: 15fbaa066a407be6ca5d86838b756d3d Enjoy…

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Poncelet’s porism: the Socratic dialogue

Posted on April 19, 2014 by apgoucher

In the 1994 proceedings of the Mathematical Association of America, there is a truly wonderful article by Jonathan King. Entitled Three Problems in Search of a Measure, it provides three very different examples of problems that can be solved using elementary … Continue reading →

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