COD Summer Bridge Enrichment -
2011
Ken Ken
Definition:
A Kenken ™ is a Latin Square divided into "cages" - groups of cells sharing at least
one edge - where there is an operation (+,-,x,/) associated with each cage showing the result of applying
that operation to the numbers in the cells.
If the operation is not associative and commutative (- or /) then
(typically) there are only two cells and the larger number precedes the smaller.
Here are some web sites containing
good information about Kenken™ and Kenken™ strategies.
Harold
Reiter is Professor of Mathematics,
University of North Carolina
at Charlotte
and his site has a link to
the Charlotte
Teachers' Circle , a group of Charlotte area teachers that meets once or
twice each month to talk math. They're a part of a national network of teacher
circles. One of their activities
last year involved solving Kenken® puzzles and Prof. Reiter wrote a nice paper on Kenken®
strategies. (http://math.uncc.edu/~hbreiter/JRMF/KenKenJR11.pdf
)
Prof. Reiter recommends Tom Davis’ Kenken for Teachers:
http://www.geometer.org/mathcircles/kenken.pdf
This is written for teachers, but it’s
just fine for students, too.
The official Kenken web site is: http://www.kenken.com/
The New
York Times daily Kenken web site is: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/crosswords/kenken.html
Thomas
Snyder’s website is promising: http://www.stanford.edu/~tsnyder/kenken.htm
Reading through these and taking time
to work the various problems and devise your own ought to keep you busy for a
while.
Oh, and this is a kinda cheesy basic
intro video:
http://www.mrlsmath.com/mr-ls-videos/kenken-%E2%80%93-introduction-and-strategy-tips-to-solve-a-kenken-4x4-puzzle/
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