Puzzles and Games

PM: You are known for your visual logic challenges and mazes. Do other genres, word puzzles for example, hold any interest for you?

EF: Only in the last few years have I started solving crosswords. They're fun, but they're hard for me. I don't have a large vocabulary - I've never been gifted in the verbal department. I hardly make any word-oriented puzzles, and I'm not especially proud of the ones I have made.

PM: So you enjoy solving other people's puzzles as well as creating your own?

EF: Sure. It's good mental exercise. It's important to challenge myself. And I get some good ideas by seeing what other people are making.

Battleships puzzles are my favorite. I always time how long it takes me to do the 6 puzzles that usually appear in GAMES magazine. But anything new and different that involves deductive thinking, spacial visualization, or mathematical insight is good. I find Ed Pegg's MathPuzzle is a great place to spark my interest.

But I also enjoy solving sequential movement puzzles like the Rubik's Cube. The mathematical background (especially group theory) really comes in handy there. I have a large collection but my collection isn't as impressive as some. It does fill an entire wall of my office though.

PM: How is solving a challenge different from creating one?

EF: When I'm solving someone else's puzzle, I have a specific goal in mind. I have to be creative, but in a particular way that helps me solve that puzzle. When I am making my own puzzles, I experiment more, and let my creativity run wild until I'm satisfied with the result.

PM: Can we look forward to a book of your creative experiments being published anytime soon?

EF: I have so many math projects going right now, including possibly a book, that writing a puzzle book is not going to happen for a while. But I'd still like to do it some day. I'm young yet (or like to think so).

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