Problem Of The Week and Problem Of The Month

I am pleased to announce that, after a very long break, The Problem Pages are back online. They have been closed for upgrades for quite some time, and those upgrades are now - more or less - complete.

If you don't know what The Problem Pages are, they are a special section of The Problem Site which posts problems on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis, for students (and adults!) to solve. These problems include Brainfood - brainteasers and puzzles, The Maine Page - Math Problems for MAML competitors, The High School Math Page - Challenging Math Problems, and The Calculus Page - Problems for first year calculus students.

Again, I offer a big THANK YOU to Sasha Joseph, Graeme McRae, and Brian Twitchell for their dedication to education and their willingness to take on these problem pages for another year!

Take a moment to check it out and submit a solution...if you can solve any of the problems!

The Gang's All Back...

When I decided it was time to rebuild The Problem Pages at The Problem Site, I thought for sure I would only be able to open up one or two of the Problem Pages, as many of the Problem Moderators had moved on to other things.

But lo and behold; they are all back! That's right! I will be moderating The Brainfood Page, Sasha Joseph intends to take up the torch on The Maine Page, Brian Twitchell (owner of C-Prompt Computers, a mathematics teacher at Mount Abram High School, and - incidentally - my older brother) thinks that his Calculus class will work with him on moderating The Calculus Page. And, as I mentioned in a previous post, Graeme McRae has offered to come back and tackle The High School Math Page.

So now, everyone is just waiting for me to finish up the new version of the pages so they can start solving problems!

And what is the status of those upgrades? They are almost finished. I expected to have them online this week. However, this past weekend a 15 year old boy who is a member of the church youth group I lead was killed in an ATV accident, so this week has been a very challenging, tiring, and emotionally draining time, and I have not even touched The Problem Pages.

Tommy's memorial service is tomorrow afternoon - after that I will be able to finish up those pages and we'll be ready to go!

Welcome Back To School!

It's not even Labor Day yet, and I'm already saying "Welcome Back To School". It doesn't seem possible. But many of the teens in the church youth group I direct went back to school on Wednesday, and the rest of them started yesterday.

Gone are those good ole days when school didn't start until after the first Monday in September!

I hope everyone has had a great summer, but now it's that time again - time to dive into the books, the homework, the classroom discussion...

Just in time for the start of school, there are a few new items you might want to take note of...

1. Graeme McRae has agreed to return to the High School Math Problem Page. He has already worked up a year's worth of problems, and is just waiting for me to finish my updates. Thanks so much for your interest in helping students learn, Graeme!
2. A new store has been added to the site, so you can do a little Back-To-School shopping right here at The Problem Site
3. Over at Quote Puzzler, you will now find the option of purchasing Gift Subscriptions for your friends, family, or students.
4. Quote Puzzler has also added two new games which are currently being tested out by the members. The games are The Honeycomb and X-Words.

The Honeycomb is a mind-blowing game, so be sure to stop by and stretch your mind a bit!

What else is new? Well, I have a couple new game ideas I intend to add to The Problem Site this year, but I won't be working on those until the Problem Pages are ready to go back online.

Also, this year I finally gave in and learned Flash programming (about time, eh?). So one of my goals for this year is to take some of the games which would benefit from a Flash implementation and reprogram them. These include Zero Gravity Connect Four, Trio Match, and a couple others.

As new features are completed, information will be posted here. In the meantime, once again, Welcome Back To School!