Happy Pi Day 2012!

I am a little early with this post, but there is good reason.  For Pi Day 2012, I made a game that you can play online, and right here!  I thought really hard about coming up with a name for it, and after mulling through many candidate names, I came up with, “The Pi Game“.  Yea, yea – the creative juices were flowing!

Anyway, you do need Flash installed in order to play it, so if you do, you are in luck!  If not, then I am sorry – but you can download it here.   If you would rather download a windows version of this game, please download it from our download page.

The object of the game is to get as many digits of Pi displayed as you can by hitting the Pi ball with the paddle.  In order to get the next digit, you also have to have the correct digit selected.  Use the keyboard to select the next digit; you can also use the keypad.

If for some reason you do not know the first 80 digits of Pi, hit the “P” key to have it displayed.

High scores are recorded and stored on your local computer.

The game is working well, but this is the first release – thus the reason I posted a few days before the actual Pi Day 2012.  If you find anything buggy with it, please let me know!

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The Four Fours

Here is an interesting math puzzle that you can play just about anywhere.  All you really need is paper and a writing instrument.  A calculator is not needed, but it is highly recommended!  The rules of this puzzle are simple enough, although there are some variants.  The rules given here are the ones I was given when I first learned of this math puzzle.

Using four fours, you are to find a mathematical expression for every whole number you can starting with zero.  You can use addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, factorials, decimal points, exponents, 0.4bar (i.e., the recurring decimal 0.44444. . .), and square roots.  Use of parentheses to emphasize the order of operations is not only allowed, but encouraged!

Some examples are:

0 = (4 + 4) – (4 + 4)

17 = (4 x 4) + (4 ÷ 4)

The Four Fours puzzle (a.k.a., The Four Fours Problem) has been known for years, and was described by Walter William Rouse Ball in his publication “Mathematical Recreations and Essays”:

Often times, there are multiple possible solutions.  How many can you find?

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Math Tricks Presents – Continuum II!

We have a new game for you – well, sort of.  It is a squeal to the last math game.  In this game, though, I eliminated the fractal backgrounds.  Although many people liked them, I received too many negative reviews about how the  images made it difficult to see the ball during run time.

Also, I slowed down the ball speed a bit to make it a little easier.  Yea, I also found a ball speed bug that was corrected.  LOL – no matter what, it seems, I get elusive bugs in my games, so if you see any in this one, please let me know!

To play the game, please Click Here.

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Continuum – Action Math Game!

The new online math game is out, and I hope you will enjoy it!

For this game, I included several math aspects.  The most obvious one is the use of fractals for the backgrounds.  I think they add a level of depth to the play fields – and are really cool to look at!

Next, I made all the bricks in the game golden rectangles.  Well, as close as I could anyway, because I had to use integer units in the design.  The dimensions of the bricks are 41 x 25 pixels, giving a ratio of 1.64 width to height, which is just a tad more than the actual value of approximately 1.61803399.

Lastly, I made as targets in the game polygons, which contain interfering balls after the polygons are destroyed.

This game is a little more mainstream from the others I have made for Math Tricks, but I think it is the most enjoyable.  Here is a game-play screen shot:

Anyway, it is online, and you can play it here.  Please feel free to give me any comments and suggestions!

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