Math and Puzzle Fans Find Magic in Martin Gardner's Legacy

Re:Math and Puzzle Fans Find Magic in Martin Gardner's Legacy by whatshisface on Friday November 01, 2024 @05:25PM (#42021704)

This one was my favorite:

"A carpenter, working with a buzz saw, wishes to cut a wooden cube, three inches on a side, into 27 one-inch cubes. He can do this job easily by making six cuts through the cube, keeping the pieces together in the cube shape. Can he reduce the number of necessary cuts by rearranging the pieces after each cut? Either show how or prove that it’s impossible."

- Martin Gardener

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Re:Math and Puzzle Fans Find Magic in Martin Gardner's Legacy by madcaptenor on Friday November 01, 2024 @06:34PM (#42022222)

Lbh arrq fvk phgf orpnhfr lbh arrq gb rkcbfr rirel snpr bs gur prageny phor.

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Re:Math and Puzzle Fans Find Magic in Martin Gardner's Legacy by gus_massa on Friday November 01, 2024 @07:34PM (#42022642)

Someone downvoted this, but it's a rot13 version of the correct answer. (A very nice a answer, by the way.)

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Re:Math and Puzzle Fans Find Magic in Martin Gardner's Legacy by quesera on Friday November 01, 2024 @11:12PM (#42023789)

In case rot13 doesn't come naturally:

  alias rot13="tr 'A-Za-z' 'N-ZA-Mn-za-m'"
  echo "Lbh arrq fvk phgf orpnhfr lbh arrq gb rkcbfr rirel snpr bs gur prageny phor." | rot13

I wish I had Mr Gardener's zero-kerf saw blades in my shop!

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Re:Math and Puzzle Fans Find Magic in Martin Gardner's Legacy by yen223 on Saturday November 02, 2024 @08:23AM (#42025972)

Saying "Please decode this ..." to Claude worked perfectly.

ChatGPT 4o mini kept getting one of the words wrong, funnily enough

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Re:Math and Puzzle Fans Find Magic in Martin Gardner's Legacy by madcaptenor on Saturday November 02, 2024 @12:32PM (#42027400)

I’m surprised by this - wouldn’t have expected there to be enough rot13 in the training data.

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Re:Math and Puzzle Fans Find Magic in Martin Gardner's Legacy by Jtsummers on Saturday November 02, 2024 @01:30PM (#42027780)

rot13 was commonly used on forums and Usenet to avoid spoilers for a very long time. As forums got the equivalent of spoiler tags or folding or whatever to hide content that changed, and of course Usenet fell out of common use a while back.

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Re:Math and Puzzle Fans Find Magic in Martin Gardner's Legacy by madcaptenor on Saturday November 02, 2024 @12:31PM (#42027395)

rot13.com also works, but this is better.

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Re:Math and Puzzle Fans Find Magic in Martin Gardner's Legacy by nopeYouAreWrong on Monday November 04, 2024 @10:56AM (#42042700)

I really, really wish I could copy comments on mobile. I'm in my doctors office waiting and I want to throw this into rot13 so i can read it

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Re:Math and Puzzle Fans Find Magic in Martin Gardner's Legacy by deely3 on Tuesday November 05, 2024 @04:31PM (#42055343)

Im really curious, what prevents you from copying comments on mobile?

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Re:Math and Puzzle Fans Find Magic in Martin Gardner's Legacy by phrenq on Saturday November 02, 2024 @12:33PM (#42027405)

As a woodworker, I wouldn’t say those six cuts would be “easy”, unless you weren’t especially concerned about keeping all of your fingers!

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