Quantum pseudotelepathy is simply one of many occasion tips that may take the bored out of board video games this Christmas, as Philip Ball explains
Physics
14 December 2022
Spencer Wilson
THERE was a time once I might be sure of beating my children at video games. Whether or not it was chess, playing cards or my private favorite, Exploding Kittens, I might sit down assured in my superior skills. Sadly, these days are gone. My kids are youngsters now, and the events once I handle to outwit them are dismayingly uncommon. However this vacation season, I’ve cooked up a plan to get my very own again.
My children have the benefit of nimble-minded youth. However I’m the one one within the household aware of quantum physics: a famously unusual world the place, as this yr’s Nobel prizewinners in physics confirmed, objects can appear to be in on the spot communication over any distance through a phenomenon referred to as entanglement. I’ve now found a handful of video games the place my information of quantum idea goes to provide me the higher hand. They could be a bit of extra unique than snakes and ladders. They could even require a quantum laptop to play correctly. However did I point out that I actually, actually need to beat my children?
My first discovery is a puzzle set by mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1779. He imagined a bunch of 36 military officers, every assigned to considered one of six ranks and 6 in a different way colored regiments. Might these officers be organized in a 6×6 grid in order that no regiment or rank is repeated in any row or column?
I’ll watch my household wrestle, earlier than smugly asserting that it’s not possible. Within the Sixties, mathematicians confirmed that, whereas there are answers …