My father was an autodidact. Among his countless other interests, including woodturning, photography, and shooting sports, he had a great passion for math. As a young kid, he introduced me to the beauty of mathematics and could talk for hours about Mersenne primes, the Koch snowflake, the Sieve of Eratosthenes, or the Sierpiński triangle.

Another passion of my father’s was computer programming, and he was always looking for ways to combine these two interests. Throughout his lifetime, he collected many math puzzles and attempted to program short codes to solve them. In the 1980s, he utilized Basic and Logo programming languages, and when he was nearing 80, he taught himself Python from books and online resources. He found this language very suitable for solving math puzzles, appreciating its ability to perform calculations in concise and elegant ways. I was amazed by my father’s ability to learn new computer skills at his age, and I always felt excited when he would email me a new math riddle that he had solved with Python. I really miss those emails and discussions.

Many of the math puzzles featured in the blog are from my father’s collection.