On March 22, 2007 I first heard about a new magic square discovery in The Netherlands
“Three Dutch secondary school pupils have created the ‘most magical magic square in 5,000 years’,…” [1]
Order-12 HSA Square
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A lively discussion among magic square friends ensued over the next week. The result? While these students should be complimented on their accomplishment, their imaginative claim was slightly (?) exaggerated. The square in question is a bent-diagonal (Franklin-type) order-12 square with rows and columns summing correctly. Also present are many other magic patterns found in Franklin type squares. The creators excitement seemed to be due to the fact that the main diagonals also summed correctly, making this a true magic square. This was a feature Ben Franklin did not accomplish in his published squares. It is also symmetric across the central horizontal line. |
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Order-12 from D. Morris page
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I found this square with identical features to the HSA square at Donald Morris’s Franklin Squares site [2]. This was published in 2005 and included a complete method of construction! The HSA square is identical to this square reflected across the leading diagonal !!!! Well... after first swapping columns 5 and 7, then 6 and 8.This pointed out by Jo Geuskens on May 27/07 and Frans Lelieveld on May 30/07. Thanks fellows. |
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Order-12 from my Most-perfect page
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Finally, I compared the HAS square to an order-12 Most-perfect magic square on my site. [3] In
the comparison, my square fails on My square also is The HSA (and the Morris) square fails on the most-perfect diagonal test! Strangely, if my square is transposed so that the 1 is in the upper left corner, all horizontal bent diagonals become magic! |
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Order-12 From Morris email of April
2,2007
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Announcement! On April 2, 2007 I received an email from Donald Morris with an order 16 Most-perfect Bent diagonal magic square! [4] Even more surprising was this order 12 square also included in the attachment. It also is a Most-perfect Bent diagonal magic square! To the best of my knowledge, these are the first such squares published! Don tells me he constructed this square in late 2005. |
The Morris Order-16 Most-perfect Bent diagonal magic square
Order-16 On April 2, 2007, Donald Morris
sent me this order-16 magic square that has almost all of the features (68)
found in Franklin's unpublished order-16 on my Franklin page. [5]
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Order-8 Recently Daniel
Schindel,Matthew Rempel And Peter Loly (Winnipeg, Canada) counted the
basic Franklin type bent-diagonal squares of order-8. [6] BTW The Peter Loly's count has
been independently corroborated by other sources in Canada and Argentina. Review of requirements to be classed as most-perfect: 1. Doubly-even pandiagonal normal magic squares (i.e. order 4, 8, 12, etc using integers from 1 to n2) 2. Every 2 x 2 block of cells (including wrap-around) sum to 2T (where T= n2 + 1) (compact) 3. Any pair of integers distant ½n along a diagonal sum to T (complete) |
[1] Announcement of the HSA square
http://www.eurogates.nl/?act=shownews&nid=1856
[2] Donald Morris's Franklin squares site
http://www.bestfranklinsquares.com/franklinsquaresmcm4.html
Not available?
[3] My Most-perfect magic squares page
http://www.geocities.com/~harveyh/most-perfect.htm#Examples
[4] Donald Morris's email address (with his permission) is
donald.morris4@sbcglobal.net
[5] My Franklin magic squares page
http://www.geocities.com/~harveyh/franklin.htm#Comparison
[6] Proc. R. Soc. A (2006) 462, 2271–2279,
doi:10.1098/rspa.2006.1684. Enumerating the bent diagonal squares of Dr Benjamin
Franklin FRS
Published online 28 February 2006. Obtainable by
download from Peter Loly's
home page
Please send me Feedback about my Web
site!
Harvey Heinz harveyheinz@shaw.ca
This page last updated
September 12, 2009
Copyright © 2002 by Harvey D. Heinz