New brain-teaser: can you find the fish's swimming path?
The Guardian has published a new geometric puzzle about a fish swimming in a tank, asking readers to work out the missing top-down view from two given views. The puzzles mark the opening of a new London maths school.
The Guardian's regular puzzle column has released a new brain-teaser built around a fish swimming inside a rectangular tank measuring two metres high, one metre wide and one metre deep.
Readers are given the front and side views of two different swimming paths and are asked to work out what the top-down view of each path would look like, assuming the fish took the shortest possible route. The exercise is designed to test three-dimensional visualisation skills, and the column's author notes that anyone struggling to picture the shapes might ask an architect for help, since architects are specifically trained to think this way. Similar puzzles were previously set in 2015 and 2017, and on both occasions architects wrote in confirming this training.
Tied to a new school opening
The puzzles were created by maths educator George Watkins to celebrate the opening of the 1729 Maths School. Located in Mill Hill, north London, it is the first specialist maths secondary school in the UK, and it will welcome its first pupils later this month.
The school's name references a well-known anecdote about a London taxi bearing the licence plate 1729.
Solutions to the puzzles were due to be published the same day at 5pm UK time. The column has run every other Monday since 2015, and its author continues to invite readers to suggest puzzles for future editions.
