TANTRIX at the London MathFest

(hold your mouse over the pics to see the captions)

If you were in any of the major indoor shopping centres in London on 13 or 20 January 2001, you might well have had a go at a Tantrix Discovery Puzzle at one of the stands set up for the London MathFest. This was the final (slightly late, you will notice ...) event of Maths Year 2000, aimed at showing people that maths-related activities can be great fun and part of the UN World Mathematical Year 2000.

The finale to the MathFest was a fun day at the EGA School in Islington, attended by people from all over London and beyond and with over 20 rooms full of activities.

In the TANTRIX room, people tried out Discovery and Rainbow Puzzles, activities for very young children and the Tantrix Strategy Game.

The first player to get all the way to 10 tiles on the day was 7 year old maths whizzkid Fred B from Prior Western School in east London. That gave the older players a shock, but a few of them soon got up to 10 too and thus earned the right to add a second set.

Laura F and friend, age 12, from Ashfield School near Nottingham got to 11 first and that score lasted a while until Dominick F from London Nautical School, age 14, arrived and set about beating it, eventually reaching 12.

Kjartan Poskitt's eagerly awaited "Murderous Maths" lecture, with the lure of finding out "how to make your teacher's brain explode" almost cleared the room, but happily the real addicts shown in the picture just couldn't drag themselves away. By now, matching the internal colours after completing the loop was becoming very challenging. Joseph N, age 12, also from Ashfield School near Nottingham, won the race to complete 13.

After that, Dominick kept trying to go one better, but was just pipped to the next two loops by Joseph. So Joseph N was victorious on the day, winning himself a Tantrix CD-ROM with a score of 15. Given a bit more time, maybe one of these players will eventually beat the current UK Discovery Record.