Kenken game for summer fun

As most of you are taking a break from math or school work, here's a little (addictive) math game to play online or as printed version: Kenken.

In it, you have to place the numbers in the grid kind of like in Sudoku so that no number appears twice in the same row or column, BUT there's an additional twist: it gives you "cages", and the numbers within a particular cage have to work to a given answer with a given math operation (either addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division).

KenKen practices logical thinking and is, I think, more fun than Sudoku.

It's easier to understand if you go see and try it yourself. The smaller sizes, such as 4x4 game, are great for kids, and the larger ones are good for us adults or older students.

• Kenken.com has nice Kenken puzzles online plus instructions, but only one for each size.

• MathDoku.com has an unlimited number of Kenken puzzles to play online in three sizes and several difficulty levels.

My favorite music

This is a bit different entry from the norm, and if you're not interested in music (or oldies music), just ignore it. (I realize people's musical tastes vary tremendously.) I just wanted to share a bit of news of my favorite, 24K Gold Music Shows, and their new YouTube channel. They mainly play music from 50s and 60s; that is, oldies music.

(Well, I do also like classical music pretty well -- I played piano in my youth for 13 years, and still occasionally do at home.)

You can now see 24K Gold music videos at YouTube. For example (click on the song links to see these in high density):


Cara Mia (my favorite!):


Love Can Build a Bridge (a beautiful ballad with a strong emotion):


Or something faster such as Elvis' Burning Love:




Johnny B Goode



See more videos - or subscribe at their channel page.

Math Jokes 4 Math Folks book

I recently received Math Jokes 4 Mathy Folks from the author, Patrick Vennebush. This is a very comprehensive collection of math-related jokes that all "mathy" people will definitely enjoy, and math teachers could use this book to enliven their lessons.

I have seen several of the jokes on the Internet, but never such a large collection.

The jokes are categories into chapters such as

• One-Liners, ("A hungry clock goes back four seconds.")

• Graphic Jokes, (For example, "Cube Roots" picture you see on the cover of the book.)

• Three Dudes, (An engineer, a mathematician, and a chemist are...)

• Conversion Chart, (10⁹ antics = 1 gigantic, or 454 graham crackers = 1 pound cake)

• Professions,("The secretary of defense informed the president, 'Yesterday, three Brazilian soldiers were killed. 'Oh, no!' the president exclaimed. ... 'How many is a brazillion, anyway?' ")

And so on.

In each section, the jokes that require the least math knowledge to understand are first, and then the material "advances". People who have studied math in college will get the most out of it, but there are joke for every level.

Please note the author has included a few bathroom jokes and a few slightly dirty ones - if you don't like those, they can easily be marked over.