Last month Norway’s Queen Sonja presented the Abel Prize ? worth six million kroner ? to Swedish mathematician Lennart Carleson . This prize is also known as the Nobel Prize for mathematics. Carleson, 78, was credited by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters for ‘profound and seminal contributions to harmonic analysis and the theory of smooth dynamical systems.’ Dynamical systems are mathematical models that seek to describe the behaviour in time of large classes of phenomena, such as those observed in meteorology and financial markets. They can also be used in biological systems, from fluctuations in fish populations to epidemiology. Carleson also proved the Fourier analysis, which has been used in science and engineering to develop cars, television, tall buildings, vaccines and MP3 players.

PUZZLE 1: On a Saturday evening in Winchester, the Hastons invited the Pleachers and three other couples over for a barbecue and a round of Monopoly. After dinner, the board was set up, and all five couples voted to play as teams.

Each team owned two complete blocks of property with not a single odd property left over, after trading the cards. (The railroads and the utilities are each considered a block of property). From the clues given, can you name the couples, name the blocks of property each owned, and rank them in order from winner to loser?

George, who is not Mr Muller, threw four 10’s in a row and paid Ann Dunn each time. Art, his wife, and the Lowes owned the only properties on which you cannot build hotels. Bob is not Mr. Haston, and Sue is not Mrs. Pleacher. Peg and her husband ? who owned the utilities ? and the Dunns owned the only street properties whose name does not include “Avenue” or “Place”. Bev and her husband owned both properties with “Saint” in their names.

Tom and his wife owned only four pieces of property, but won the game because they owned the most expensive hotels.

The Hastons placed second because they owned most of one side of the board; third place went to Ben and his wife; fourth to Art and his wife; and the losers were the Pleachers.

Ben and his wife owned five pieces of property. Dot and her spouse owned the block of three properties immediately following Ben’s block of two. Dot and her spouse also owned the block directly across from their block of three.

Solutions on July 3

CORRECT ENTRIES

June 5

Ananya Ghosh, Cal - 58; P. Sarada Nanda; Kamalika Ghosh, Cal- 29; Sudipto Banerjee, Minneapolis; Tuli Roy; Saumya Shaw; Sreejit Choudhury, Cal- 104; Abhishek Sharma, Jamshedpur; Rohit Gupta, Burnpur; Lakshman Joshi; Sidharth Udani, Cal- 25; Prahlad Agarwal, Siliguri; Debraj Datta, Cal- 64; Debapriya Chakraborty; Cal- 56; Sanjana Goswami; Paramjot Singh,Jamshedpur; Moumita Tripathi, Cal- 29; Kuntalesh Dewangan, Ranchi.

PUZZLE CRACKED

The response this week was great. Sorry for not being able to fit everybody’s name. Here goes the solution for June 5.

Solution: The band playing grunge when Tim and Keri met at the T-shirt vendor was Ellyfish. The band playing speed metal when they met at the Mosh pit was Korrupt. The bands playing country music when they met at the information booth were Retread Ed and the flat Tires. The band playing reggae when they met at the carnival games was Yellow Reef.

Hint: From clue 1 we know that Korrupt can either be reggae or speed-metal (as it is neither country nor grunge), while the last two sentences actually specify Korrupt to be speedmetal and Retreat Ed and the Flat Tires to be the country band. The rest follows using simple elimination from other clues.