Sucker mate

Here's a Foxtrot strip where Jason rattles off a series of moves to beat his dad at chess. E2-E4, F1-C4, D10F3, F3xF7, CHECKMATE. I WIN.

 I learned the sequence as "The Sucker Mate". I actually won a game in a chess tournament with this mate. It was 9th grade at West Junior High School, my first chess tournament, taking place on a Saturday morning. An opposing team had come from another junior high school, and they were superior. I lost my first two games. My next opponent proposed a switch. One of their friends had come along who wasn't officially on the roster. I agreed to allow my opponent to have this other guy take his place.

Egged on by his friends, this guy came on cool and cocky. He played swiftly. He played confidently. The game was over in 20 seconds. You can imagine what the other team thought. We were all dumbstruck -- this is one of the first 'tricks' you learn when you're in a chess club.

Our school got crushed. That game was the only game I won that day, but it was more than enough. Yes it was.

Vacation puzzle

What's the fewest number of pretzel sticks you need to move to make this equation true?

Best Backgammon End Game

This started as a challenge to see how many of my pieces I could get in the bar. I managed to not only get all of them hit, but to block all of the spots in the computer's home. Trailing by 289 points with 13 of his pieces off the board, I doubled. Computer ceded. Sweet. And a little disappointing... it thought I would win at this point, would I have? It would have been fun to try to roll my prime all the way home (advance my block of six one step at a time).

Strange Trip

 

(This series later turned into the "Melt into You" series of prints, first shown at Bridges Pécs, Hungary in 2010. The third print was dropped from the series to meet space requirements... 4 square images fit better than 5.)

Droste

Mathmap is a program that lets you manipulate images with formulas. After battling the learning curve (software, xtools, plugins, filters, settings, faulty transparency handling in mathmap cocoa) I finally got some nice results. Here's the cover image from Naked Geometry, done with a Droste effect.

Human Tessellation

This is called a 6.3.3.3.3 tessellation. Thanks to Vi Hart for her fine modeling!

Bridges 2009

We got together for some live "Naked Geometry" at the Bridges 2009 conference in Banff. Pictured here are Mike Naylor, Karl Schaffer, Vi Hart, Erik Demaine, Eva Knoll, and Bob Bosch.