Day 1: 5/24/2021
Math Adventures started the morning off by playing Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe: each square is its own board, and each move within a small board moves the next player to a different small board. To win, you must win three boards in a row, rather than three squares. The second image shows the alternate version we came up with that goes a level deeper, but we don’t really know how we would play that.
The group also played Set, which is a very unique game that we played today. It consists of cards, which have one of 4 attributes: color, number, pattern, and shape. For 3 cards to be a set, they must have attributes that are completely the same or completely different from each other. We played Set online and it was very fun, but Mr. Noland beat us all very badly.
In the afternoon, we watched a Spanish mathematics movie called “Fermat’s Room”. In “Fermat’s Room”, there are four mathematicians that are tasked with solving a number pattern riddle sent by a mysterious organizer. These four mathematicians ultimately solve the riddle, and then they have to meet at a lakeside before heading over to an unknown location. At the unknown location, which is a warehouse, the four mathematicians enter a smaller room that looks like an escape room, and in this room, they are sent various enigmas that they must solve within a minute in order to prevent the walls from closing in. An example of one of the enigmas is:
A string of 169 0 and 1’s are given. {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}. What does it mean?
As one could probably tell, the enigma above would take much longer than a minute to solve, which was the case for some of the enigmas that the mathematicians were tasked to complete. Eventually, the walls closed into about the size of an elevator, and three of the mathematicians escaped, leaving behind the fourth mathematician who ultimately was the mysterious organizer of the room.
