| |
h&l > quadsum > game > about |
|
| |
|
|
| |
Tod says:
One day at the lake (I live in Minnesota), I was thinking about a variety of geometric shapes and their relationships, which is the kind of daydreaming my mind is often drawn to. Most of the time I carry a notebook of graphing paper with me so I can sketch out the forms and designs that occur to me.
Stuart says:
Some people might find that odd. |
|
| |
Tod says:
They might be right. Anyway, for about a week prior to that day at the beach, I'd been thinking about squares, specifically four square shapes and the various ways they could be positioned to form different designs.
One image in my mind's eye was particularly interesting to me. I don't know why, but I kept thinking about it. |
 |
|
|
| |
|
After I drew this image out and studied it, I started moving the squares around some, creating different designs. |
|
|
| |
| In one series of designs I added smaller squares at the four corners of the larger original squares. I linked the four larger squares at the smaller squares in the corners. |
|
|
|
| |
|
Still later I took these designs and began adding more large squares, again connecting the large squares with small squares at the corners. Some of these expanded designs with multiple large and small squares looked a little like crossword puzzles to me. |
|
|
| |
Stuart says:
And you started thinking that maybe there was a game in these shapes from the lake.
Tod says:
I did. Then it occurred to me that numbers rather than letters should be in the squares. The idea that the four numbers in the small squares at the corners of each large square should add up to a sum in the large square came pretty quickly after that. |
|
| |
Now it was a game: Start with a sum number in a large square, and put four numbers in the small squares around it that add up to that sum. What made it challenging was where a sum number shared a common small square with another sum number.
Experimenting, I realized that not allowing numbers to be repeated in the four small squares limited the possible combinations, which added an extra challenge. |
|
|
|
| |
Stuart says:
We don’t want it to be too easy.
Tod says:
We sure don’t. But it still was a little too easy, because I was allowing the use of zero in the small squares. This significantly reduced the challenge and strategy of the game. Once I eliminated the zero, Quadsum was ready to play.
Now back to the lake... |
|
