If you have a few chess sets at home, try the following exercise: Arrange eight queens on a board so that none of them are attacking each other. If you succeed once, can you find a second arrangement?

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

Chess aficionados know that the game is one of exponential complexity. The first three moves yield more than 9 million possible board positions and there are nearly 319 billion possible ways to play ...