Anyone can learn to count in the ordinals, even a child, and so let us learn how to count to $\omega^2$, the first compound limit ordinal.
The large-format poster is available:
Some close-up views:
I would like to thank the many people who had made helpful suggestions concerning my poster, including Andrej Bauer and especially Saul Schleimer, who offered many detailed suggestions.
I was so glad to be involved with this project of Hannah Hoffman. She had inquired on Twitter whether mathematicians could provide a proof of the irrationality of root two that rhymes. I set off immediately, of course, to answer the challenge. My wife Barbara Gail Montero and our daughter Hypatia and I spent a day thinking, writing, revising, rewriting, rethinking, rewriting, and eventually we had a set lyrics providing the proof, in rhyme and meter. We had wanted specifically to highlight not only the logic of the proof, but also to tell the fateful story of Hippasus, credited with the discovery.
Hannah proceeded to create the amazing musical version:
The diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side
an astounding fact the Pythagoreans did hide
but Hippasus rebelled and spoke the truth
making his point with irrefutable proof
it’s absurd to suppose that the root of two
is rational, namely, p over q
square both sides and you will see
that twice q squared is the square of p
since p squared is even, then p is as well
now, if p as 2k you alternately spell
2q squared will to 4k squared equate
revealing, when halved, q’s even fate
thus, root two as fraction, p over q
must have numerator and denomerator with factors of two
to lowest terms, therefore, it can’t be reduced
root two is irrational, Hippasus deduced
as retribution for revealing this irrationality
Hippasus, it is said, was drowned in the sea
but his proof live on for the whole world to admire
a truth of elegance that will ever inspire.
I saw the following image on Twitter and Reddit, an image suggesting an entire class of infinitary analogues of the game Connect-Four. What fun! Let’s figure it out!
I’m not sure to whom the image or the idea is due. Please comment if you have information. (See comments below for current information.)
The rules will naturally generalize those in Connect-Four. Namely, starting from an empty board, the players take turns placing their coins into the $\omega\times 4$ grid. When a coin is placed in a column, it falls down to occupy the lowest available cell. Let us assume for now that the game proceeds for $\omega$ many moves, whether or not the board becomes full, and the goal is to make a connected sequence in a row of $\omega$ many coins of your color (you don’t have to fill the whole row, but rather a connected infinite segment of it suffices). A draw occurs when neither or both players achieve their goals.
In the $\omega\times 6$ version of the game that is shown, and indeed in the $\omega\times n$ version for any finite $n$, I claim that neither player can force a win; both players have drawing strategies.
Theorem. In the game Connect-$\omega$ on a board of size $\omega\times n$, where $n$ is finite, neither player has a winning strategy; both players have drawing strategies.
Proof. For a concrete way to see this, observe that either player can ensure that there are infinitely many of their coins on the bottom row: they simply place a coin into some far-out empty column. This blocks a win for the opponent on the bottom row. Next, observe that neither player can afford to follow the strategy of always answering those moves on top, since this would lead to a draw, with a mostly empty board. Thus, it must happen that infinitely often we are able to place a coin onto the second row. This blocks a win for the opponent on the second row. And so on. In this way, either players can achieve infinitely many of their coins on each row, thereby blocking any row as a win for their opponent. So both players have drawing strategies. $\Box$
Let me point out that on a board of size $\omega\times n$, where $n$ is odd, we can also make this conclusion by a strategy-stealing argument. Specifically, I argue first that the first player can have no winning strategy. Suppose $\sigma$ is a winning strategy for the first player on the $\omega\times n$ board, with $n$ odd, and let us describe a strategy for the second player. After the first move, the second player mentally ignores a finite left-initial segment of the playing board, which includes that first move and with a odd number of cells altogether in it (and hence an even number of empty cells remaining); the second player will now aim to win on the now-empty right-side of the board, by playing as though playing first in a new game, using strategy $\sigma$. If the first player should ever happen to play on the ignored left side of the board, then the second player can answer somewhere there (it doesn’t matter where). In this way, the second player plays with $\sigma$ as though he is the first player, and so $\sigma$ cannot be winning for the first player, since in this way the second player would win in this stolen manner.
Similarly, let us argue by strategy-stealing that the second player cannot have a winning strategy on the board $\omega\times n$ for odd finite $n$. Suppose that $\tau$ is a winning strategy for the second player on such a board. Let the first player always play at first in the left-most column. Because $n$ is odd, the second player will eventually have to play first in the second or later columns, leaving an even number of empty cells in the first column (perhaps zero). At this point, the first player can play as though he was the second player on the right-side board containing only that fresh move. If the opponent plays again to the left, then our player can also play in that region (since there were an even number of empty cells). Thus, the first player can steal the strategy $\tau$, and so it cannot be winning for the second player.
I am unsure about how to implement the strategy stealing arguments when $n$ is even. I shall give this more thought. In any case, the theorem for this case was already proved directly by the initial concrete argument, and in this sense we do not actually need the strategy stealing argument for this case.
Meanwhile, it is natural also to consider the $n\times\omega$ version of the game, which has only finitely many columns, each infinite. The players aim to get a sequence of $\omega$-many coins in a column. This is clearly impossible, as the opponent can prevent a win by always playing atop the most recent move. Thus:
Theorem. In the game Connect-$\omega$ on a board of size $n\times\omega$, where $n$ is finite, neither player has a winning strategy; both players have drawing strategies.
Perhaps the most natural variation of the game, however, occurs with a board of size $\omega\times\omega$. In this version, like the original Connect-Four, a player can win by either making a connected row of $\omega$ many coins, or a connected column or a connected diagonal of $\omega$ many coins. Note that we orient the $\omega$ size column upwards, so that there is no top cell, but rather, one plays by selecting a not-yet-filled column and then occupying the lowest available cell in that column.
Theorem. In the game Connect-$\omega$ on a board of size $\omega\times\omega$, neither player has a winning strategy. Both players have drawing strategies.
Proof. Consider the strategy-stealing arguments. If the first player has a winning strategy $\sigma$, then let us describe a strategy for the second player. After the first move, the second player will ignore finitely many columns at the left, including that first actual move, aiming to play on the empty right-side of the board as though the first player using stolen strategy $\sigma$ (but with colors swapped). This will work fine, as long as the first player also plays on that part of the board. Whenever the first player plays on the ignored left-most part, simply respond by playing atop. This prevents a win in that part of the part, and so the second player will win on the right-side by pretending to be first there. So there can be no such winning strategy $\sigma$ for the first player.
If the second player has a winning strategy $\tau$, then as before let the first player always play in the first column, until $\tau$ directs the second player to play in another column, which must eventually happen if $\tau$ is winning. At that moment, the first player can pretend to be second on the subboard omitting the first column. So $\tau$ cannot have been winning after all for the second player. $\Box$
In the analysis above, I was considering the game that proceeded in time $\omega$, with $\omega$ many moves. But such a play of the game may not actually have filled the board completely. So it is natural to consider a version of the game where the players continue to play transfinitely, if the board is not yet full.
So let us consider now the transfinite-play version of the game, where play proceeds transfinitely through the ordinals, until either the board is filled or one of the players has achieved the winning goal. Let us assume that the first player also plays first at limit stages, at $\omega$ and $\omega\cdot 2$ and $\omega^2$, and so on, if game play should happen to proceed for that long.
The concrete arguments that I gave above continue to work for the transfinite-play game on the boards of size $\omega\times n$ and $n\times\omega$.
Theorem. In the transfinite-play version of Connect-$\omega$ on boards of size $\omega\times n$ or $n\times\omega$, where $n$ is finite, neither player can have a winning strategy. Indeed, both players can force a draw while also filling the board in $\omega$ moves.
Proof. It is clear that on the $n\times\omega$ board, either player can force each column to have infinitely many coins of their color, and this fills the board, while also preventing a win for the opponent, as desired.
On the $\omega\times n$ board, consider a variation of the strategy I described above. I shall simply always play in the first available empty column, thereby placing my coin on the bottom row, until the opponent also plays in a fresh column. At that moment, I shall play atop his coin, thereby placing another coin in the second row; immediately after this, I also play subsequently in the left-most available column (so as to force the board to be filled). I then continue playing in the bottom row, until the opponent also does, which she must, and then I can add another coin to the second row and so on. By always playing the first-available second-row slot with all-empty second rows to the right, I can ensure that the opponent will eventually also make a second-row play (since otherwise I will have a winning condition on the second row), and at such a moment, I can also make a third-row play. By continuing in this way, I am able to place infinitely many coins on each row, while also forcing that the board becomes filled. $\Box$
Unfortunately, the transfinite-play game seems to break the strategy-stealing arguments, since the play is not symmetric for the players, as the first player plays first at limit stages.
Nevertheless, following some ideas of Timothy Gowers in the comments below, let me show that the second player has a drawing strategy.
Theorem. In the transfinite-play version of Connect-$\omega$ on a board of size $\omega\times\omega$, the second player has a drawing strategy.
Proof. We shall arrange that the second player will block all possible winning configurations for the first player, or to have column wins for each player. To block all row wins, the second player will arrange to occupy infinitely many cells in each row; to block all diagonal wins, the second player will aim to occupy infinitely many cells on each possible diagonal; and to block the column wins, the second player will aim either to have infinitely many cells on each column or to copy a winning column of the opponent on another column.
To achieve these things, we simply play as follows. Take the columns in successive groups of three. On the first column in each block of three, that is on the columns indexed $3m$, the second player will always answer a move by the first player on this column. In this way, the second player occupies every other cell on these columns—all at the same height. This will block all diagonal wins, because every diagonal winning configuration will need to go through such a cell.
On the remaining two columns in each group of three, columns $3m+1$ and $3m+2$, let the second player simply copy moves of the opponent on one of these columns by playing on the other. These moves will therefore be opposite colors, but at the same height. In this way, the second player ensures that he has infinitely many coins on each row, blocking the row wins. And also, this strategy ensures that in these two columns, at any limit stage, either neither player has achieved a winning configuration or both have.
Thus, we have produced a drawing strategy for the second player. $\Box$
Thus, there is no advantage to going first. What remains is to determine if the first player also has a drawing strategy, or whether the second player can actually force a win.
Gowers explains in the comments below also how to achieve such a copying mechanism to work on a diagonal, instead of just on a column.
I find it also fascinating to consider the natural generalizations of the game to larger ordinals. We may consider the game of Connect-$\alpha$ on a board of size $\kappa\times\lambda$, for any ordinals $\alpha,\kappa,\lambda$, with transfinite play, proceeding until the board is filled or the winning conditions are achieved. Clearly, there are some instances of this game where a player has a winning strategy, such as the original Connect-Four configuration, where the first player wins, and presumably many other instances.
Question. In which instances of Connect-$\alpha$ on a board of size $\kappa\times\lambda$ does one of the players have a winning strategy?
It seems to me that the groups-of-three-columns strategy described above generalizes to show that the second player has at least a drawing strategy in Connect-$\alpha$ on board $\kappa\times\lambda$, whenever $\alpha$ is infinite.
Stay tuned…
I’d like to discuss the issue of error and error propagation in the constructions of classical geometry. How does error propagate in these constructions? How sensitive are the familiar classical constructions to small errors in the use of the straightedge or compass?
Let me illustrate what I have in mind by considering the classical construction of Apollonius of the perpendicular bisector of a line segment $AB$. One forms two circles, centered at $A$ and $B$ respectively, each with radius $AB$. 
These arcs intersect at points $P$ and $Q$, respectively, which form the perpendicular bisector, meeting the original segment at the midpoint $C$.
That is all fine and good, and one can easily prove that indeed $PQ$ is perpendicular to $AB$ and that $C$ is the midpoint of $AB$, as desired.
When carrying out such a construction in practice, however, there will inevitably be some small errors. We do not expect to implement it exactly, with infinite precision, but rather, we expect some small errors in the placement of the compass or straightedge, and perhaps these errors may accumulate and they propagate through the construction. What I would like to discuss is the sensitivity of this construction and the other classical constructions to these small errors.
For example, suppose that we are given points $A$ and $B$. When we seek to construct the circle centered at $A$ with radius $AB$, we place the point of the compass at $A$, and this placement may have some small error deviating from $A$, landing somewhere in the blue circle. Similarly, the writing (or etching) implement end of the compass is placed at $B$, with its own possibly different error, landing the orange circle at $B$. The arc actually resulting will be some arc arising with some such small errors, like this:
We may represent the space of all arcs that could arise in conformance with those error bounds as the blurred orange arc below. This image was created simply by drawing many dozens of such arcs in orange, with various choices for the center and radius within the error circles, and blending the results together.
We carry out the same construction with similar errors for the other arc, centered at $B$ and passing through $A$. These arcs overlap in the darker orange regions above and below, determining the points $P$ and $Q$.
The actual arcs we draw and the corresponding vertical will land somewhere inside these blurred regions, perhaps like this:
Note that in this particular case, the resulting line $PQ$ is noticably non-perpendicular to $AB$, and the resulting point $C$ is noticably not the midpoint. Consider the space of all the bisectors $PQ$ that might arise in conformance with our errors on $A$ and $B$, showing the result as the vertical red shaded region. 
The darker red region is the space of possible points $C$ that we might have constructed as the “midpoint” $C$, in conformance with the error estimates.
Given the size of the original error bounds on the points $A$ and $B$, it may be surprising that even such a standard simple construction as this — constructing the perpendicular bisector and midpoint of a segment — appears to have comparatively large error propagation, since the shaded red region $C$ is quite large and includes many points that one would not say are close to being the midpoint. In this sense, the Apollonius perpendicular bisector construction appears to be sensitive to the errors of compass placement.
Is there a better construction? For example, in terms of improving the accuracy at least of the perpendicularity of $PQ$ to $AB$, it would seem to help to use a much larger circle, which would lower the variation in the resulting “right” angle. But this is partly because we have so far assumed that compass error arises only with the placement of the points of the compass, and not during the course of actually drawing the arc. But of course, one can imagine that errors arise from a flexing of the compass during use, causing it to deviate from circularity, or from slippage, which might reasonably be expected to cause increasing error with the length or degree of the arc, and so on, and such a model of error might have greater errors with large circles.
One could in principle carry out similar analyses for any geometric construction, and use the corresponding results to compare the sensitivity of various methods for constructing the same object, as well as modeling different sources of error. The goal might be to mount a precise analysis of all the standard constructions and compare competing constructions for accuracy.
There is a literature of papers doing precisely this, and I will try to post some references later (or please do so in the comments, if you have some good ones).
Another approach to error estimation would be to think of the errors at points $A$ and $B$ as probability distributions, centered at $A$ and $B$ and with a certain variation; and one then gets corresponding distributions for the points $P$ and $Q$, which are not rigid shapes as in my diagrams, but qualitatively similar distributions spread out in that region, and a resulting probability distribution for the point $C$.
Finally, let me mention that one might hope to improve the accuracy of a construction, simply by repeating it and averaging the result, or by some other convergence algorithm. For example, as a first step, we might simply perform the Apollonius bisector construction twice, producing midpoint candidates $C_0$ and $C_1$, and we could proceed simply find the midpoint of $C_0C_1$ as a further presumably more accurate midpoint. Or we could iterate in some other manner and hope to converge to the actual midpoint. For example, we could produce seven midpoint candidates, and take the resulting median point.
I’d like to explain to you how to draw chessboards by hand in perfect perspective, using only a straightedge. In this post, I’ll explain how to construct chessboards of any size, starting with the size of the basic unit square.
This post follows up on the post I made yesterday about how to draw a chessboard in perspective view, using only a straightedge. That method was a subdivision method, where one starts with the boundary of the desired board, and then subdivides to make a chessboard. Now, we start with the basic square and build up. This method is actually quite efficient for quickly making very large boards in perspective view.
I want to emphasize that this is something that you can actually do, right now. It’s fun! All you need is a piece of paper, a pencil and a straightedge. I’ll wait right here while you gather your materials. Use a ruler or a chop stick (as I did) or the edge of a notebook or the lid of a box. Sit at your table and draw a huge chessboard in perspective. You can totally do this.
Start with a horizon, having two points at infinity (orange), at left and right, and a third point midway between them (brown), which we will call the diagonal infinity. Also, mark the front corner of your chess board (blue).
Extend the front corner to the points at infinity. And then mark off (red) a point that will be a measure of the grid spacing in the chessboard. This will the be size of the front square.
You can extend that point to infinity at the right. This delimits the first rank of the chessboard.
Next, extend the front corner of the board to the diagonal infinity.
The intersection of that diagonal with the previous line determines a point, which when extended to infinity at the left, produces the first square of the chessboard.
And that line determines a new point on the leading rank edge. Extend that point up to the diagonal infinity, which determines another point on the second rank line.
Extend that line to infinity at the left, which determines another point on the leading rank edge.
Continuing in this way, one can produce as many first rank squares as desired. Go ahead and do that. At each step, you extend up to the diagonal infinity, which determines a new point, which when extended to infinity at the left determines another point, and so on.
If you should now reflect on the current diagram, you may notice that we have actually determined many further points in the grid than we have mentioned — and thanks to my daughter Hypatia for noticing this simplification — for there is a whole triangle of further intersection points between the files and the diagonals.
We can use these points (and we do not need them all) to construct the rest of the board, by drawing out the lines to infinity at the right. Thus, we construct the whole chessboard:
One can construct a perspective chessboard of any size this way, and one can simply continue with the construction and make it larger, if desired.
It will look a little better if you add a point at infinity down below (and do so directly below the diagonal point at infinity, but a good distance down below the board), and extend the board downward one level. The corresponding diagram on yesterday’s post might be helpful.
You can now color the tile pattern, and you’ll have a chessboard in perfect perspective view.
If you keep going, you can make extremely large chessboards. In time, I hope that you will come to learn how to complete an infinite chess board in finite time.
Let me show you how to hand-draw an image of a chessboard in perspective, using only a straightedge. There is no need to measure any distances or to make calculations of any kind. All you need is a straightedge, paper and your pen or pencil.
Imagine the vast doodling potential! A person who happens to be stuck in a lecture on some other less interesting topic could easily make one or more elaborate chessboards in perfect perspective, using only a straightedge! Please carry out the construction and then share your resulting images. I would love to see them.
To begin, give yourself a horizon at the top of the page, with two points at infinity (in orange), and also two points (blue) that will become the front and back corner of your chessboard. You can play around with different arrangements of these points, which will lead ultimately to different perspective views.
Using your straightedge, draw the lines from those reference points to the points at infinity. The resulting enclosed region will ultimately become the main chess board. One can alternatively think of starting with the front edges of the desired board, and then setting a horizon and using that to determine the points at infinity, and then adding the back edges. 
If you like, you can add a third point at infinity down below, and a front bottom reference point (blue), to give the board some thickness. Construct the lines to the bottom point at infinity.
The result is now the main outline of your chessboard as a rectangular solid.
Next, construct the center point of the top face, by drawing the two diagonals and finding the intersection point. I call this the center point, because it is the point that represents in the perspective view the actual center point of the chessboard, even though this point is not in the “center” of the quadrilateral representing the board. It is remarkable that one can find that point without needing to measure or calculate anything, simply because the two straight lines of the diagonal of the chessboard intersect at that point, and this remains true in the perspective view. This is the key idea that enables the entire construction method to proceed with only a straightedge.
Construct the midpoint lines by drawing the lines from that centerpoint to the points at infinity.
Now you have the chessboard with the main midlines drawn.
Construct the center points of the two diagonal squares, by intersecting the diagonals of each of them.
Construct the lines that extend those points to the points at infinity.
Thus, you have constructed the main 4 x 4 grid.
You can extend the grid lines down to the bottom point at infinity like so:
One can stop with the 4 x 4 board, if desired. Simply add suitable shading, and you’ve completed the 4 x 4 chessboard in perspective.
Alternatively, one can continue with one more iteration to construct the 8 x 8 board. From the 4 x 4 grid (with no shading yet) simply construct the center points of the squares on the main diagonal, and extend those lines to infinity. This will enable you to draw the 8 x 8 grid lines, and after shading, you’ll have the complete chessboard.
The initial arrangement of points affects the nature of the perspective view. Having the points at infinity very far away will produce something closer to orthoprojection; having them close produces a more extreme perspective, which simulates a view from a vantage point extremely close to the board.
Please give the construction a try! All you need is paper, pencil and a straightedge! Provide links below in the comments to photos of your creations.
Meanwhile, let me point you towards my follow post, How to draw infinite chessboards by hand in perfect perspective, using only a straightedge. The difference between the methods is that the method of this post is about subdividing a given board, and the other method is about generating arbitrarily large chessboards from a given unit square.
I learned these construction method years ago from my CUNY geometer colleague Ilya Kofman.
I had the pleasure a few weeks ago to visit my daughter’s math class at her school and undertake some fun math activities with the sixth graders (11-12 years old, all girls). What a fun time we had!
The topic was orthoprojection and the problem of gaining insight about a three-dimensional object or arrangement by considering its various orthogonal projections.
I had prepared a collection of puzzles, which I hoped would challenge the students in spatial reasoning and abstract visualization. (The puzzle booklet is available at bottom.)
The puzzles involved orthogonal projections of arrangements of unit blocks.
Unit blocks are a certain kind of wooden block toy, which exhibit precise dimensions in the ratio $1\times 2\times 4$. Thus, two blocks oriented the shortest way combine to the same thickness as one block oriented another way, or half the long length. Thus, unit blocks can be flexibly combined in a huge variety of combinations, often leading to aesthetically pleasing and structurally sound creations. Furthermore, they are thought to help develop a child’s intuition for fractions in a completely natural and meaningful way, for often the child needs to build a support exactly $1/4$ unit or $1/2$ unit taller, or what have you, and in this way they are lead to see how the fractional units combine into wholes.
Unit blocks are commonly found in American elementary schools and kindergartens, and woodworkers will recognize that one can make a set of unit blocks from standard $2\times 4$ lumber, available at most hardware stores. You can also buy unit block sets online, and my opinion is that one hardly needs any other toy than a good unit block set for any child aged 2 to 102. Note: you do NOT need any of the fancy extra blocks, not following the unit block standard, that are sometimes available with these sets; the quality of play is best with just the unit blocks and half-units, thin units, double units and so on.
For the school visit, I brought sufficient blocks for all the girls, and explained that we were going to play with blocks the way that a mathematician or engineer might play with blocks. And I had prepared a puzzle booklets, one per child (available below).
For each puzzle, one sees the front view, top view and right side view of an arrangement of blocks, and the challenge is to assemble the blocks so as to realize those views. (In these puzzles, I had chosen not to show any hidden lines and edges, to make them slightly more challenging, although it would also make sense to me to show hidden lines; it would be customary to do so with a dashed line.)
Here are a few more easy examples with solutions.
It happens that these front/top/side projection view problems inspire some deep feelings in me, for they remind me of my father, who was a mechanical engineer. In my childhood, he would often bring home and show me blueprints of the machines or machine parts that he was designing or working with, and those blueprints were filled with front/top/side projection views of the various parts. In pre-computer design days, engineers would specify their machine parts by providing the various othogonal views. (Nowadays, of course, computers are used and one can compute orthogonal and perspective views from any angle.)
In my daughter’s classroom, the students took up the puzzles with a seriousness that shocked me. Once we had passed out the puzzle booklets and distributed the blocks, the girls just steamed through the puzzles, one after the other, totally absorbed. They didn’t want any hints or advice or help of any kind; they just went from each puzzle to the next, solving them one after another. There were a sufficient number of blocks for them all to work on the smaller puzzles on their own, but for the larger puzzles, they formed groups and combined blocks. It was a big success!
Without further ado, here are your puzzles. I’ve also included some photos below, out of order, and some puzzles do not match a photo and vice versa, but you can look at the photos if you need a hint.
After these puzzles, we moved on to the inverse problem. The girls made their own arrangement of blocks and then drew all six orthogonal projections: front, top, right, left, back, bottom. You can draw them on the net of a cube, so that you can imagine folding the cube so as to realize the projections.
And after this, we moved beyond unit blocks to more general shapes. Can you solve the following projection puzzles?
The most challenging puzzle was the following. Can you imagine a solid that appears as a square from the front, a circle from the top and a triangle from the right side?
The complete puzzle booklet is available here: Fun with orthoprojections!
(And here is an alternative version of the puzzles made by David Butler for use with Jenga blocks, which have the dimensional ratios $3\times 5\times 15$ rather than $1\times2\times 4$: Jenga Views; see also this Twitter thread.)
Although I made the puzzles with six-graders in mind, the puzzles are interesting for people of any age, and I have proof: a picture of some of my CUNY math-major college students solving the puzzles in my office.
And here are videos of some fascinating sculptures playing with orthoprojections:
Consider what I call the Sudoku game, recently introduced in the MathOverflow question Who wins two-player Sudoku? posted by Christopher King (user PyRulez). Two players take turns placing numbers on a Sudoku board, obeying the rule that they must never explicitly violate the Sudoku condition: the numbers on any row, column or sub-board square must never repeat. The first player who cannot continue legal play loses. Who wins the game? What is the winning strategy?
The game is not about building a global Sudoku solution, since a move can be legal in this game even when it is not part of any global Sudoku solution, provided only that it doesn’t yet explicitly violate the Sudoku condition. Rather, the Sudoku game is about trying to trap your opponent in a maximal such position, a position which does not yet explicitly violate the Sudoku condition but which cannot be further extended.
In my answer to the question on MathOverflow, I followed an idea suggested to me by my daughter Hypatia, namely that on even-sized boards $n^2\times n^2$ where $n$ is even, then the second player can win with a mirroring strategy: simply copy the opponent’s moves in reflected mirror image through the center of the board. In this way, the second player ensures that the position on the board is always symmetric after her play, and so if the previous move was safe, then her move also will be safe by symmetry. This is therefore a winning strategy for the second player, since any violation of the Sudoku condition will arise on the opponent’s play.
This argument works on even-sized boards precisely because the reflection of every row, column and sub-board square is a totally different row, column and sub-board square, and so any new violation of the Sudoku conditions would reflect to a violation that was already there. The mirror strategy definitely does not work on the odd-sized boards, including the main $9\times 9$ case, since if the opponent plays on the central row, copying directly would immediately introduce a Sudoku violation.
After posting that answer, Orson Peters (user orlp) pointed out that one can modify it to form a winning strategy for the first player on odd-sized boards, including the main $9\times 9$ case. In this case, let the first player begin by playing $5$ in the center square, and then afterwards copy the opponent’s moves, but with the ten’s complement at the reflected location. So if the opponent plays $x$, then the first player plays $10-x$ at the reflected location. In this way, the first player can ensure that the board is ten’s complement symmetric after her moves. The point is that again this is sufficient to know that she will never introduce a violation, since if her $10-x$ appears twice in some row, column or sub-board square, then $x$ must have already appeared twice in the reflected row, column or sub-board square before that move.
This idea is fully general for odd-sized Sudoku boards $n^2\times n^2$, where $n$ is odd. If $n=2k-1$, then the first player starts with $k$ in the very center and afterward plays the $2k$-complement of her opponent’s move at the reflected location.
Conclusion.
Note that on the even boards, the second player could also play complement mirror copying just as successfully.
What I really want to tell you about, however, is the infinite Sudoku game (following a suggestion of Sam Hopkins). Suppose that we try to play the Sudoku game on a board whose subboard squares are $\mathbb{Z}\times\mathbb{Z}$, so that the full board is a $\mathbb{Z}\times\mathbb{Z}$ array of those squares, making $\mathbb{Z}^2\times\mathbb{Z}^2$ altogether. (Or perhaps you might prefer the board $\mathbb{N}^2\times\mathbb{N}^2$?)
One thing to notice is that on an infinite board, it is no longer possible to get trapped at a finite stage of play, since every finite position can be extended simply by playing a totally new label from the set of labels; such a move would never lead to a new violation of the explicit Sudoku condition.
For this reason, I should like to introduce the Sudoku Solver-Spoiler game variation as follows. There are two players: the Sudoku Solver and the Sudoku Spoiler. The Solver is trying to build a global Sudoku solution on the board, while the Spoiler is trying to prevent this. Both players must obey the Sudoku condition that labels are never to be explicitly repeated in any row, column or sub-board square. On an infinite board, the game proceeds transfinitely, until the board is filled or there are no legal moves. The Solver wins a play of the game, if she successfully builds a global Sudoku solution, which means not only that every location has a label and there are no repetitions in any row, column or sub-board square, but also that every label in fact appears in every row, column and sub-board square. That is, to count as a solution, the labels on any row, column and sub-board square must be a bijection with the set of labels. (On infinite boards, this is a stronger requirement than merely insisting on no repetitions.)
The Solver-Spoiler game makes sense in complete generality on any set $S$, whether finite or infinite. The sub-boards are $S^2=S\times S$, and one has an $S\times S$ array of them, so $S^2\times S^2$ for the whole board. Every row and column has the same size as the sub-board square $S^2$, and the set of labels should also have this size.
Upon reflection, one realizes that what matters about $S$ is just its cardinality, and we really have for every cardinal $\kappa$ the $\kappa$-Sudoku Solver-Spoiler game, whose board is $\kappa^2\times\kappa^2$, a $\kappa\times\kappa$ array of $\kappa\times\kappa$ sub-boards. In particular, the game $\mathbb{Z}^2\times\mathbb{Z}^2$ is actually isomorphic to the game $\mathbb{N}^2\times\mathbb{N}^2$, despite what might feel initially like a very different board geometry.
What I claim is that the Solver has a winning strategy in the all the infinite Sudoku Solver-Spoiler games, in a very general and robust manner.
Theorem. For every infinite cardinal $\kappa$, the Solver has a winning strategy to win the $\kappa$-Sudoku Solver-Spoiler game.
Proof. Consider first the countably infinite Sudoku game, and assume the initial position is finite and that the Spoiler will make finitely many moves on each turn. Consider what it means for the Solver to win at the limit. It means, first of all, that there are no explicit repetitions in any row, column or sub-board. This requirement will be ensured since it is part of the rules for legal play not to violate it. Next, the Solver wants to ensure that every square has a label on it and that every label appears at least once in every row, every column and every sub-board. If we think of these as individual specific requirements, we have countably many requirements in all, and I claim that we can arrange that the Solver will simply satisfy the $n^{th}$ requirement on her $n^{th}$ play. Given any finite position, she can always find something to place in any given square, using a totally new label if need be. Given any finite position, any row and any particular label $k$, since can always find a place on that row to place the label, which has no conflict with any column or sub-board, since there are infinitely many to choose from and only finitely many conflicts. Similarly with columns and sub-boards. So each of the requirements can always be fulfilled one-at-a-time, and so in $\omega$ many moves she can produce a full solution.
The argument works equally well no matter who goes first or if the Spoiler makes arbitrary finite play, or indeed even infinite play, provided that the play is part of some global solution (perhaps a different one each time), since on each move the Solve can simply meet the requirement by using that solution at that stage.
An essentially similar argument works when $\kappa$ is uncountable, although now the play will proceed for $\kappa$ many steps. Assuming $\kappa^2=\kappa$, a consequence of the axiom of choice, there are $\kappa$ many requirements to meet, and the Solve can meet requirement $\alpha$ on the $\alpha^{th}$ move. If $\kappa$ is regular, we can again allow the Spoiler to make arbitrary size-less-than-$\kappa$ size moves, so that at any stage of play before $\kappa$ the position will still be size less than $\kappa$. (If $\kappa$ is singular, one can allow Spoiler to make finitely many moves at once or indeed even some uniform bounded size $\delta<\kappa$ many moves at once. $\Box$
I find it interesting to draw out the following aspect of the argument:
Observation. Every finite labeling of an infinite Sudoku board that does not yet explicitly violate the Sudoku condition can be extended to a global solution.
Similarly, any size less than $\kappa$ labeling that does not yet explicitly violate the Sudoku condition can be extended to a global solution of the $\kappa$-Sudoku board for any infinite cardinal $\kappa$.
What about asymmetric boards? It has come to my attention that people sometimes look at asymmetric Sudoku boards, whose sub-boards are not square, such as in the six-by-six Sudoku case. In general, one could take Sudoku boards to consist of a $\lambda\times\kappa$ array of sub-boards of size $\kappa\times\lambda$, where $\kappa$ and $\lambda$ are cardinals, not necessarily the same size and not necessarily both infinite or both finite. How does this affect the arguments I’ve given?
In the finite $(n\times m)\times (m\times n)$ case, if one of the numbers is even, then it seems to me that the reflection through the origin strategy works for the second player just as before. And if both are odd, then the first player can again play in the center square and use the mirror-complement strategy to trap the opponent. So that analysis will work fine.
In the case $(\kappa\times\lambda)\times(\lambda\times\kappa)$ where $\lambda\leq\kappa$ and $\kappa=\lambda\kappa$ is infinite, then the proof of the theorem seems to break, since if $\lambda<\kappa$, then with only $\lambda$ many moves, say putting a common symbol in each of the $\lambda$ many rectangles across a row, we can rule out that symbol in a fixed row. So this is a configuration of size less than $\kappa$ that cannot be extended to a full solution. For this reason, it seems likely to me that the Spoiler can win the Sudoko Solver-Spoiler game in the infinite asymmetric case.
Finally, let’s consider the Sudoku Solver-Spoiler game in the purely finite case, which actually is a very natural game, perhaps more natural than what I called the Sudoku game above. It seems to me that the Spoiler should be able to win the Solver-Spoiler game on any nontrivial finite board. But I don’t yet have an argument proving this. I asked a question on MathOverflow: The Sudoku game: Solver-Spoiler variation.
Here is an interesting game I heard a few days ago from one of my undergraduate students; I’m not sure of the provenance.
The game is played with stones on a grid, which extends indefinitely upward and to the right, like the lattice $\mathbb{N}\times\mathbb{N}$. The game begins with three stones in the squares nearest the origin at the lower left. The goal of the game is to vacate all stones from those three squares. At any stage of the game, you may remove a stone and replace it with two stones, one in the square above and one in the square to the right, provided that both of those squares are currently unoccupied.
For example, here is a sample play.
Question. Can you play so as completely to vacate the yellow corner region?
One needs only to move the other stones out of the way so that the corner stones have room to move out. Can you do it? It isn’t so easy, but I encourage you to try.
Here is an online version of the game that I coded up quickly in Scratch: Escape!
My student mentioned the problem to me and some other students in my office on the day of the final exam, and we puzzled over it, but then it was time for the final exam. So I had a chance to think about it while giving the exam and came upon a solution. I’ll post my answer later on, but I’d like to give everyone a chance to think about it first.
Solution. Here is the solution I hit upon, and it seems that many others also found this solution. The main idea is to assign an invariant to the game positions. Let us assign weights to the squares in the lattice according to the following pattern. We give the corner square weight $1/2$, the next diagonal of squares $1/4$ each, and then $1/8$, and so on throughout the whole playing board. Every square should get a corresponding weight according to the indicated pattern.
The weights are specifically arranged so that making a move in the game preserves the total weight of the occupied squares. That is, the total weight of the occupied squares is invariant as play proceeds, because moving a stone with weight $1/2^k$ will create two stones of weight $1/2^{k+1}$, which adds up to the same. Since the original three stones have total weight $\frac 12+\frac14+\frac14=1$, it follows that the total weight remains $1$ after every move in the game.
Meanwhile, let us consider the total weight of all the squares on the board. If you consider the bottom row only, the weights add to $\frac12+\frac14+\frac18+\cdots$, which is the geometric series with sum $1$. The next row has total weight $\frac14+\frac18+\frac1{16}+\cdots$, which adds to $1/2$. And the next adds to $1/4$ and so on. So the total weight of all the squares on the board is $1+\frac12+\frac14+\cdots$, which is $2$. Since we have $k$ stones with weight $1/2^k$, another way to think about it is that we are essentially establishing the sum $\sum_k\frac k{2^k}=2$.
The subtle conclusion is that after any finite number of moves, only finitely many of those other squares are occupied, and so some of them remain empty. So after only finitely many moves, the total weight of the occupied squares off of the original L-shape is strictly less than $1$. Since the total weight of all the occupied squares is exactly $1$, this means that the L-shape has not been vacated.
So it is impossible to vacate the original L-shape in finitely many moves. $\Box$
Suppose that we relax the one-stone-per-square requirement, and allow you to stack several stones on a single square, provided that you eventually unstack them. In other words, can you play the stacked version of the game, so as to vacate the original three squares, provided that all the piled-up stones eventually are unstacked?
No, it is impossible! And the proof is the same invariant-weight argument as above. The invariance argument does not rely on the one-stone-per-square rule during play, since it is still an invariant if one multiplies the weight of a square by the number of stones resting upon it. So we cannot transform the original stones, with total weight $1$, to any finite number of stones on the rest of the board (with one stone per square in the final position), since those other squares do not have sufficient weight to add up to $1$, even if we allow them to be stacked during intermediate stages of play.
Meanwhile, let us consider playing the game on a finite $n\times n$ board, with the rule modified so that stones that would be created in row or column $n+1$ in the infinite game simply do not materialize in the $n\times n$ game. This breaks the proof, since the weight is no longer an invariant for moves on the outer edges. Furthermore, one can win this version of the game. It is easy to see that one can systematically vacate all stones on the upper and outer edges, simply by moving any of them that is available, pushing the remaining stones closer to the outer corner and into oblivion. Similarly, one can vacate the penultimate outer edges, by doing the same thing, which will push stones into the outer edges, which can then be vacated. By reverse induction from the outer edges in, one can vacate every single row and column. Thus, for play on this finite board with the modified rule on the outer edges, one can vacate the entire $n\times n$ board!
Indeed, in the finite $n\times n$ version of the game, there is no way to lose! If one simply continues making legal moves as long as this is possible, then the board will eventually be completely vacated. To see this, notice first that if there are stones on the board, then there is at least one legal move. Suppose that we can make an infinite sequence of legal moves on the $n\times n$ board. Since there are only finitely many squares, some of the squares must have been moved-upon infinitely often. If you consider such a square closest to the origin (or of minimal weight in the scheme of weights above), then since the lower squares are activated only finitely often, it is clear that eventually the given square will replenished for the last time. So it cannot have been activated infinitely often. (Alternatively, argue by induction on squares from the lower left that they are moved-upon at most finitely often.) Indeed, I claim that the number of steps to win, vacating the $n\times n$ board, does not depend on the order of play. One can see this by thinking about the path of a given stone and its clones through the board, ignoring the requirement that a given square carries only one stone. That is, let us make all the moves in parallel time. Since there is no interaction between the stones that would otherwise interfere, it is clear that the number of stones appearing on a given square in total is independent of the order of play. A tenacious person could calculate the sum exactly: each square is becomes occupied by a number of stones that is equal to the number of grid paths to it from one of the original three stones, and one could use this sum to calculate the total length of play on the $n\times n$ board.
Here is a epistemic logic puzzle that I wrote for my students in the undergraduate logic course I have been teaching this semester at the College of Staten Island at CUNY. We had covered some similar puzzles in lecture, including Cheryl’s Birthday and the blue-eyed islanders.
Bonus Question. Suppose that Alice and Bob are each given a different fraction, of the form $\frac{1}{n}$, where $n$ is a positive integer, and it is commonly known to them that they each know only their own number and that it is different from the other one. The following conversation ensues.
JDH: I privately gave you each a different rational number of the form $\frac{1}{n}$. Who has the larger number?
Alice: I don’t know.
Bob: I don’t know either.
Alice: I still don’t know.
Bob: Suddenly, now I know who has the larger number.
Alice: In that case, I know both numbers.
What numbers were they given?
Give the problem a try! See the solution posted below.
Meanwhile, for a transfinite epistemic logic challenge — considerably more difficult — see my puzzle Cheryl’s rational gifts.
Solution.
When Alice says she doesn’t know, in her first remark, the meaning is exactly that she doesn’t have $\frac 11$, since that is only way she could have known who had the larger number. When Bob replies after this that he doesn’t know, then it must be that he also doesn’t have $\frac 11$, but also that he doesn’t have $\frac 12$, since in either of these cases he would know that he had the largest number, but with any other number, he couldn’t be sure. Alice replies to this that she still doesn’t know, and the content of this remark is that Alice has neither $\frac 12$ nor $\frac 13$, since in either of these cases, and only in these cases, she would have known who has the larger number. Bob replies that suddenly, he now knows who has the larger number. The only way this could happen is if he had either $\frac 13$ or $\frac 14$, since in either of these cases he would have the larger number, but otherwise he wouldn’t know whether Alice had $\frac 14$ or not. But we can’t be sure yet whether Bob has $\frac 13$ or $\frac 14$. When Alice says that now she knows both numbers, however, then it must be because the information that she has allows her to deduce between the two possibilities for Bob. If she had $\frac 15$ or smaller, she wouldn’t be able to distinguish the two possibilities for Bob. Since we already ruled out $\frac 13$ for her, she must have $\frac 14$. So Alice has $\frac 14$ and Bob has $\frac 13$.
Many of the commentators came to the same conclusion. Congratulations to all who solved the problem! See also the answers posted on my math.stackexchange question and on Twitter:
Epistemic logic puzzle: Still Don’t Know.
Another question from the logic final exam. Epistemic logic. https://t.co/UBpQPTyVPc
— Joel David Hamkins (@JDHamkins) December 20, 2017
Let me tell you about the game Buckets of fish. 
This is a two-player game played with finitely many buckets in a line on the beach, each containing a finite number of fish. There is also a large supply of additional fish available nearby, fresh off the boats.
Taking turns, each player selects a bucket and removes exactly one fish from it and then, if desired, adds any finite number of fish from the nearby supply to the buckets to the left.
For example, if we label the buckets from the left as 1, 2, 3 and so on, then a legal move would be to take one fish from bucket 4 and then add ten fish to bucket 1, no fish to bucket 2, and ninety-four fish to bucket 3. The winner is whoever takes the very last fish from the buckets, leaving them empty.
Since huge numbers of fish can often be added to the buckets during play, thereby prolonging the length of play, a skeptical reader may wonder whether the game will necessarily come to an end. Perhaps the players can prolong the game indefinitely? Or must it always come to an end?
Question. Does every play of the game Buckets of fish necessarily come to an end?
The answer is yes, every game must eventually come to a completion. I shall give several arguments.
Theorem. Every play of the game Buckets of fish ends in finitely many moves. All the fish in the buckets, including all the new fish that may have been added during play, will eventually run out by some finite stage during play.
That is, no matter how the players add fish to the buckets during play, even with an endless supply of fish from the boats, they will eventually run out of fish in the buckets and one of the players will take the last fish.
First proof. We prove the claim by (nested) induction on the number of buckets. If there is only one bucket, then there are no buckets to the left of it, and so there is no possibility in this case to add fish to the game. If the one bucket contains $k$ fish, then the game clearly ends in $k$ moves. Assume by induction that all plays using $n$ buckets end in finitely many moves, and suppose that we have a game situation with $n+1$ buckets, with $k$ fish in bucket $n+1$. We now prove by induction on $k$ that all such games terminate. This argument is therefore an instance of nested induction, since we are currently inside our proof by induction on $n$, in the induction step of that proof, and in order to complete it, we are undertaking a separate full induction on $k$. If $k=0$, then there are no fish in bucket $n+1$, and so the game amounts really to a game with only $n$ buckets, which terminates in finitely many steps by our induction hypothesis on $n$. So, let us assume that all plays with $k$ fish in bucket $n+1$ terminate in finitely many moves. Consider a situation where there are $k+1$ many fish in that bucket. I claim that eventually, one of those fish must be taken, since otherwise all the moves will be only on the first $n$ buckets, and all plays on only $n$ buckets terminate in finitely many moves. So at some point, one of the players will take a fish from bucket $n+1$, possibly adding additional fish to the earlier buckets. But this produces a situation with only $k$ fish in bucket $n+1$, which by our induction assumption on $k$ we know will terminate in finitely many steps. So we have proved that no matter how many fish are in bucket $n+1$, the game will end in finitely many moves, and so the original claim is true for $n+1$ buckets. Thus, the theorem is true for any finite number of buckets. QED
A second proof. Let me now give another proof, following an idea arising in a conversation with Miha Habič. We want to prove that there is no infinitely long play of the game Buckets of fish. Suppose toward contradiction that there is a way for the players to conspire to produce an infinite play, starting from some configuration of some finite number $n$ of buckets, each with finitely many fish in them. Fix the particular infinitely long play. Let $m$ be the right-most bucket from which a fish was taken infinitely often during that infinite course of play. It follows, for example, that $m<n$, since the top bucket can be used only finitely often, as it never gets replenished. Since bucket $m$ starts with only finitely many fish in it, and each time it is replenished, it is replenished with only finitely many fish, it follows that in order to have been used infinitely many times, it must also have been replenished infinitely often. But each time it was replenished, it was because there was some bucket further to the right that had been used. Since there are only finitely many buckets to the right of bucket $m$, it follows that one of them must have been used infinitely often. This contradicts the choice of $m$ as the right-most bucket that was used infinitely often. QED
A third proof. Let me now give a third proof, using ordinals. We shall associate with each Buckets-of-fish position a certain ordinal. With the position $$7\quad 2\quad 5\quad 24,$$ for example, we associate the ordinal $$\omega^3\cdot 24+\omega^2\cdot 5+\omega\cdot 2+7.$$ More generally, the number of fish in each bucket of a position becomes the coefficient of the corresponding power of $\omega$, using higher powers for the buckets further to the right. The key observation to make is that these associated ordinals strictly descend for every move of the game, since one is reducing a higher-power coefficient and increasing only lower-power coefficients. Since there is no infinite descending sequence of ordinals, it follows that there is no infinite play in the game Buckets of fish. This idea also shows that the ordinal game values of positions in this game are bounded above by $\omega^\omega$, and every ordinal less than $\omega^\omega$ is realized by some position. QED
OK, fine, so now we know that the game always ends. But how shall we play? What is the winning strategy? Say you are faced with buckets having fish in the amounts: $$4\quad 5\quad 2\quad 0\quad 7\quad 4$$ What is your winning move? Please give it some thought before reading further.
The winning strategy turns out to be simpler than you might have expected.
Theorem. The winning strategy in the game Buckets of fish is to play so as to ensure that every bucket has an even number of fish.
Proof. Notice first, as a warm-up, that in the case that there is only one bucket containing an even number of fish, then the second player will win, since the first player will necessarily make it odd, and then the second player will make it even again, and so on. So it will be the second player who will make it zero, winning the game. So with one bucket, the player who can make the bucket even will be the winner.
Next, notice that if you play so as to give your opponent an even number of fish in every bucket, then whatever move your opponent makes will result in an odd number of fish in the bucket from which he or she takes a fish (and possibly also an odd number of fish in some of the earlier buckets as well, if they happen to add an odd number of fish to some of them). So if you give your opponent an all-even position, then they cannot give you back an all-even position.
Finally, notice that if you are faced with a position that is not all-even, then you can simply take a fish from the right-most odd bucket, thereby making it even, and add fish if necessary to the earlier buckets so as to make them all even. In this way, you can turn any position that is not all-even into an all-even position in one move.
By following this strategy, a player will ensure that he or she will take the last fish, since the winning move is to make the all-zero position, which is an all-even position, and the opponent cannot produce an all-even position. QED
In the particular position of the game mentioned before the theorem, therefore, the winning move is to take a fish from the bucket with 7 fish and add an odd number of fish to the bucket with 5 fish, thereby producing an all-even position.
Finally, let’s consider a few variations of the game. It is clear that the all-even strategy works in the versions of the game where one is limited to add at most one fish to each of the earlier buckets, and this version of the game is actually playable, since the number of fish does not grow too much. A similar variation arises where one can either or add or remove any number of fish (or just at most one) from any of the earlier buckets, or where one can, say, add either 5 or 6 fish only to each of the earlier buckets. What is important in the argument is simply that one should be able to ensure the all-even nature of the buckets.
For a more interesting variation, consider what I call the Take 3 version of the game, where one can take either one, two or three fish from any bucket and then add any number of fish to the earlier buckets. The game must still eventually end, but what is the winning strategy?
Question. What is your strategy in the Take 3 variation of Buckets of fish?
Please post your answers in the comments, and I’ll post an answer later. One can generalize this to the Take $n$ variation, where on each turn, the player is allowed to take between 1 and $n$ fish from any bucket, and add as many fish as desired to the earlier buckets.
Another puzzling variation is where each player can take any number of fish from a bucket, and then add any number of fish to earlier buckets. Can you find a strategy for this version of the game? Please post in the comments.
Let me share a mathematical gem with you, the following paradoxical “theorem.”
Theorem. Every triangle is isosceles.
Proof. Consider an arbitrary triangle $\triangle ABC$. Let $Q$ be the intersection of the angle bisector (blue) at $\angle A$ and the perpendicular bisector (green) of $BC$ at midpoint $P$.
Drop perpendiculars from $Q$ to $AB$ at $R$ and to $AC$ at $S$. Because $P$ is the midpoint of $BC$ and $PQ$ is perpendicular, we deduce $BQ\cong CQ$ by the Pythagorean theorem. Since $AQ$ is the angle bisector of $\angle A$, the triangles $AQR$ and $AQS$ are similar, and since they share a hypotenuse, they are congruent. It follows that $AR\cong AS$ and also $QR\cong QS$. Therefore $\triangle BQR$ is congruent to $\triangle CQS$ by the hypotenuse-leg congruence theorem. So $RB\cong SC$. And therefore,
$$AB\cong AR+RB\cong AS+SC\cong AC,$$
and so the triangle is isosceles, as desired. QED
Corollary. Every triangle is equilateral.
Proof. The previous argument proceeded from an arbitrary vertex of the triangle, and so any pair of adjacent sides in the triangle are congruent. So all three are congruent, and therefore it is equilateral. QED
Perhaps you object to my figure, because depending on the triangle, perhaps the angle bisector of $A$ passes on the other side of the midpoint $P$ of $BC$, which would make the point $Q$ lie outside the triangle, as in the following figure.
Nevertheless, essentially the same argument works also in this case. Namely, we again let $Q$ be the intersection of the angle bisector at $\angle A$ with the perpendicular bisector of $BC$ at midpoint $P$, and again drop the perpendiculars from $Q$ to $R$ and $S$. Again, we get $BQ\cong CQ$ by the Pythagorean theorem, using the green triangles. And again, we get $\triangle ARQ\cong\triangle ASQ$ since these are similar triangles with the same hypotenuse. So again, we conclude $\triangle BQR\cong\triangle CQS$ by hypotenuse-leg. So we deduce $AB\cong AR-BR\cong AS-CS\cong AC$, by subtracting rather than adding as before, and so the triangle is isosceles.
Question. What is wrong with these arguments?
Please post your answers in the comments below.
The argument is evidently due to W. W. Rouse Ball, Mathematical Recreations and Essays (1892). I first heard it years ago, when I was in graduate school. Shortly afterward, my advisor W. Hugh Woodin happened to be a little late to seminar, and so I leaped to the chalkboard and gave this proof, leaving the distinguished audience, including R. Solovay, scratching their heads for a while. Woodin arrived, but Solovay wouldn’t let him start the seminar, since he wanted to resolve the triangle argument. What fun!
I should like to follow up my post last week about the impossibility of finding regular polygons in the integer lattice. This time, however, we shall consider the hexagonal and triangular lattices. It is easy to find lattice points that form the vertices of an equilateral triangle or a regular hexagon.
And similarly, such figures can be found also in the triangular lattice.
Indeed, the triangular and hexagonal lattices are each refinements of the other, so they will allow exactly the same shapes arising from lattice points.
But can you find a square? How about an octagon?
Question. Which regular polygons can be formed by vertices of the hexagonal or triangular lattices?
The answer is that in fact there are no other types of regular polygons to be found! I’d like to prove this by means of some elementary classical reasoning.
Theorem. The only non-degenerate regular polygons that arise from vertices in the hexagonal or triangular lattices are the equilateral triangles and regular hexagons.
This theorem extends the analysis I gave in my post last week for the integer lattice, showing that there are no regular polygons in the integer lattice, except squares.
Proof. The argument for the hexagonal and triangular lattices uses a similar idea as with the integer lattice, but there is a little issue with the square and pentagon case. We can handle both the hexagonal and triangular lattices at the same time. The crucial fact is that both of these lattices are invariant by $120^\circ$ rotation about any lattice vertex.
To get started, suppose that we can find a square in the hexagonal lattice. 
We may rotate this square by $120^\circ$ about the vertex $a$, and the square vertices will all land on lattice-vertex points. Next, we may rotate the resulting square about the point $b$, and again the vertices will land on lattice points. So we have described how to transform any square vertex point $a$ to another lattice point $c$ which is strictly inside the square. By applying that operation to each of the four vertices of the square, we thereby arrive by symmetry at a strictly smaller square. Thus, for any square in the hexagonal or triangular lattice, there is a strictly smaller square. But if there were any square in the lattice at all, there would have to be a square with smallest side-length, since there are only finitely many lattice distances less than any given length. So there can be no square in the hexagonal or triangular lattice.
The same construction works with pentagons. 
If there is a pentagon in the lattice, then we may rotate it about point $a$, and then again about point $b$, resulting in point $c$ strictly inside the pentagon, which leads to an infinite sequence of strictly smaller pentagon, whose sizes (by similarity) go to zero. So there can be no pentagon in the hexagonal or triangular lattices.
If we attempt to apply this argument with triangles or hexagons, then the process simply leads back again to points in the original figure. But of course, since triangles and hexagons do arise in these grids, we didn’t expect the construction to work with them.
But also, this particular two-step rotation construction does not succeed with the heptagon (7-sides) or larger polygons, since the resulting point $c$ ends up outside the original heptagon, which means that the new heptagon we construct ends up being larger, rather than smaller than the original.
Fortunately, for the 7-gon and higher, we may fall back on the essential idea used in the square lattice case. Namely, because the interior angles of these polygons are now larger than $120^\circ$, we may simply rotate each side of the polygon by $120^\circ$ and thereby land at a lattice point. In this way, we construct a proportionally smaller instance of the same regular $n$-gon, and so there can be no smallest instance of such a polygon.
In summary, in every case of a regular polygon except the equilateral triangle and the regular hexagon, we found that by means of $120^\circ$ rotations we were able to find a strictly smaller instance of the polygon. Therefore, there can be no instances of such polygons arising from lattice points in the hexagonal or triangular tilings. QED
See my earlier post: there are no regular polygons in the integer lattice, except squares.
Consider a regular square lattice, formed by a grid of intersection points of uniformly spaced parallel horizontal and vertical lines in the plane. One may easily find points that form the vertices of a square in this lattice.
But can one find points that form the vertices of regular hexagon? Or a regular pentagon? How about an equilateral triangle? And so on.
The answer is that one cannot find these shapes using vertices in the square lattice.
Theorem. There is no regular pentagon in the square lattice, and no regular hexagon, no regular heptagon, and so on. Indeed, the only nondegenerate regular polygons to be found using vertices in a square lattice are squares themselves.
I think this must be a classical result. I was inspired by Vaughn Climenhaga’s beautiful image in his Proof without words answer on MathOverflow, which handled the case of a hexagon. Reflecting upon it, I realized that the same idea works with other regular polygons, and I endeavored to produce the corresponding images, below.
Proof. Suppose that we could find five vertices in the square lattice that formed a regular pentagon. Construct on each side a perpendicular of the same length, as pictured in brown below. Since the lattice is invariant under $90^\circ$ rotations centered at a lattice point, each of these new points is still a lattice point. And by symmetry, they form the vertices of a (proportionally smaller) regular pentagon. Therefore, there can be no regular pentagon at all in the square lattice, since if there is one, it is clear that there would have to be a smallest instance. 
An alternative way to argue is: by similarity, the size of the smaller pentagon shrinks by the same factor with each step, and so in the limit the size approaches zero; but clearly, we cannot have a lattice-point regular pentagon whose size is smaller than the square lattice spacing itself. So there is no regular pentagon in the square lattice.
The same argument works with larger regular polygons. The main point to realize is that for all regular $n$-gons, where $n>4$, when you construct the perpendicular on one of the sides, the resulting point is strictly inside the original polygon, and this is why the resulting regular $n$-gon is strictly smaller than the original. This completes the proof for all $n$-gons for $n>4$.
The case of an equilateral triangle requires special care. If one attempts the same construction idea as above, building the perpendicular on the edges of a triangle, then the resulting triangle becomes larger, rather than smaller, and so the proof method breaks down.
Nevertheless, one can reduce the equilateral triangle case to a hexagon: if you could find an equilateral triangle in the square lattice, then since the lattice is invariant under translation via a lattice-point line segment, it follows that we could build a regular hexagon. But we have already showed that we cannot find a regular hexagon in the square lattice, and so we cannot find an equilateral triangle.
So we’ve completed the proof for all nondegenerate regular polygons, except the square. QED
For those who might be interested, here is the tex code I used to generate the nested polygons. The code accepts input $n$ to produce a regular $n$-gon with the perpendiculars constructed.
\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage[rgb]{xcolor}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{positioning,calc}
\usepackage{ifthen}
\begin{document}
\newcommand\nestedpolygon[1]{
\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=4]
\pgfmathsetmacro\n{#1}
\pgfmathsetmacro\m{\n-1}
\pgfmathsetmacro\shrink{sqrt((sin(180/\n))^2+(cos(180/\n)-2*sin(180/\n))^2)}
\pgfmathsetmacro\OffSet{acos((sin(180/\n)^2+cos(180/\n)*(cos(180/\n)-2*sin(180/\n)))/\shrink)}
\pgfmathsetmacro\gc{360+100*exp((5-\n)/3.5)}
\pgfmathsetmacro\gcc{640+120*exp((5-\n)/3)}
\definecolor{GonColor}{wave}{\gc}
\definecolor{GonColorC}{wave}{\gcc}
\pgfmathsetmacro\d{8}
\foreach \k in {0,...,\d} {
\pgfmathsetmacro\R{\shrink^\k};
\pgfmathsetmacro\c{100*exp(-\k/6)};
\pgfmathsetmacro\a{2*\R*sin(180/\n)}
\pgfmathsetmacro\f{\k*\OffSet}
\foreach \i in {0,...,\m} {
\coordinate (x) at (360*\i/\n+\f:\R);
\coordinate (y) at (360*\i/\n+360/\n+\f:\R);
% the perp indicator
\ifthenelse{\k=0\AND\i=\m\AND\n<20}{\draw[very thin,black!\c!white] ($(x)!.85!(y)$) node (p) {} --
($(p)!1!90:(y)$) node (q) {} -- ($(q)!1!90:(p)$);}{}
% connecting to lower level
\draw [line width=.5*exp(-\k/2),GonColorC!\c!white] (y) -- ($(y)!1!-90:(x)$);
% edge and vertices of current gon
\draw [line width=1.5*exp(-\k/2),GonColor!\c!white] (x) node
[circle,scale=.3*\R,black!\c!white,fill=black!\c!white] {} -- (y);
}
\draw (\f:\R) node [circle,scale=.3*\R,black!\c!white,fill=black!\c!white] {};
}
\end{tikzpicture}}
\foreach\n in {5,6,7,8,9,10,12,16,20} {
\eject
$$\nestedpolygon{\n}$$
}
\end{document}
See my follow-up post on the regular polygons arising in the hexagonal and triangular lattices. 
We’ve been making some Fermi estimations in the Math for Liberal Arts class I am teaching, and today we discuss the following question:
Question. If you collect all the hot-air that you have breathed in your life, what would the volume be? If you made a hot-air balloon, would it be able to lift you and all your possessions?
To answer, let’s start with the first part. How much do I breathe? If I imagine inhaling and then exhaling a deep, big breath, I figure I could inflate a small paper bag, perhaps well over one liter, but probably not as much as two liters. But my passive resting breathing is probably much less than a big deep breath. So let’s figure a half liter per ordinary passive breath. How often do I breathe? Well, in the swimming pool, I can hold my breath under water for a minute or even two minutes (in my younger swim-team days); but if I hold my breath right now, I can say that it does start to feel a little unnatural, like I should take my next breath, even after just about five or ten seconds, even though this impulse could be resisted longer. It seems to me that my body wants to take another breath in about that time. If we breathe every five seconds, that would mean 12 breaths per minute, so let’s say ten breaths per minute, which would mean a volume of 5 liters per minute. That makes $5\times 60=300$ liters per hour, or $300*24=7200$ liters per day. In a year, this would be $7200\times 365$, which is less than 7000 times 400, which is 2,800,000 liters per year. Let’s say 2.5 million liters per year of hot air. Times 50 years would make $125$ million liters of hot air in all.
Now, each liter of air fills a cube 10 cm on a side, and one thousand of these fit into a cubic meter. So we’ve got 125,000 cubic meters of hot air. This is the same as a cube 50 meters by 50 meters by 50 meters. That is my hot-air balloon! Filled with a lifetime of hot air. (This is considerably larger, more than one hundred times as large, as a typical recreational hot-air balloon, which I understand are usually under 1000 cubic meters. From this point of view, it would seem likely that it could lift me and all my possessions, although body temperature may be much less than is achieved in those balloons.)
If the air was at my body temperature ($98.6^\circ$ F), then would it be able to lift me and all my possessions? Well, let’s see how much it would lift. Hot air expands in proportion to temperature (from absolute zero). If it is a day like today, about $50^\circ$ degrees F, which is about a 50 degree F difference, and absolute zero is minus 460 F. So this is about a 10 per cent increase in temperature. (In metric: we have body temperature of about 37 degrees, and it is about 10 degrees Celsius today, so a difference of 27 degrees, and absolute zero is minus 270, so about ten per cent increase, as I had said.)
So the heat of the hot air caused it to expand in volume by ten percent. The buoyant force of the hot-air balloon is exactly the weight of this displaced air, by the Archimedean principle. Thus, the lifting force of my hot-air balloon will be equal to the mass of air filling ten percent of the volume we computed. How much does air weigh? I happen to remember from my high school science class that one mole of air at one atmosphere of pressure is about 22 liters (my teacher had a cube of exactly that size sitting on his desk, to help us to visualize it). And I also know that air is mainly nitrogen, which forms the molecule $N_2$, and since nitrogen in the periodic table has an atomic number of 14, the molecule $N_2$ has a mass of 28 grams per mole. So air weighs about 28 grams per 22 liters, which is about 1.3 grams per liter. Each cubic meter is one thousand liters, and so 1.3 kilograms per cubic meter (this is much larger than I had expected—air weighs more than one kilogram per cubic meter!). My hot air in total was 125,000 cubic meters, and we said that because of the temperature difference, the volume expanded by ten percent, or 12,500 cubic meters. This expansion would displace an equal volume of air, which weighs 1.3 kg per cubic meter. Thus, the displaced air weighs $12,500\times 1.3\approx 16,000$ kilograms, or about 16 metric tons. So all my hot air, at body temperature in a giant hot air balloon on a chilly day, would have a lifting force able to lift 16 metric tons.
Would this lift me and all my possessions? Do I own 16 tons of stuff? Well, thankfully, I don’t own a car, which would be a ton or more by itself. But I do own a lot of books, a piano, an oven, a dishwasher, some heavy furniture, paintings, and various other items, as well as a collection of large potted plants on my terrace. It seems likely to me that I could fit most if not all my possessions within 16 tons. To gain a little confidence in this, let’s estimate the mass of my books. My wife and I have about twelve large shelves filled with books, each about 2 meters, and then I have about 3 more such shelves filled with books in my offices at the university. If we count half of the home books as mine, plus my office books, that makes 9 shelves times two meters, for about 20 meters of books. If the books are about 25 cm tall on average, and 15 cm deep, that makes $20\times .25\times .15=.75$ cubic meters of books. Let’s round up to one cubic meter of books. How much does a cubic meter of paper weigh? Well, one ream of copy paper weighs about 2 kilograms, and that is a volume of 8.5 by 11 by 2 inches. One meter is about 33 inches, and so we could fill one cubic meter with a pile of reams of copy paper 3 by 3 by 17, which would be 163 reams, or about 300 kilograms. So not even a half ton of books! So I can definitely lift all my most important possessions within the 16 tons.
Final answer: Yes, if we filled a giant balloon with all the hot-air I have breathed in my life, at body temperature, then it would lift me and all my possessions.
