Puzzle—A Mathematical Programming Approach for Mongolia’s “The Four Strongest” Puzzle

Bismark Singh ()
Additional contact information
Bismark Singh: Operational Research, School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom

INFORMS Transactions on Education, 2025, vol. 25, issue 3, 265-269

Abstract: We describe a mathematical programming approach to solve a recently proposed puzzle from Mongolia. This puzzle involves physically laying out toys of four legendary Mongolian animals in different orientations and positions within a box such that they fit. The author of the puzzle finds a solution by an exhaustive enumeration of the exponentially many possibilities and by employing a series of axiomatic assumptions. In the absence of the physical toys (and, thus, their true measurements), could we use operations research to help us? We present one such approach and several exercises that could be tasked in an introductory course on mathematical optimization. Classroom activities provide us a diverse set of solutions for some of these exercises.

Keywords: mathematical programming; incomplete data; inclusion-exclusion principle; linear arrangements; puzzles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/ited.2024.0112 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orited:v:25:y:2025:i:3:p:265-269

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in INFORMS Transactions on Education from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().