Techknight Plays “Street” Checkers with Ncredible
by Techknight
One day after school, Techknight and his pal Ncredible decided to have a checkers match. Techknight was the best checkers player in School 180 back in his day.
“I am an unbeatable checkers player. You can’t beat me!” claimed Techknight.
Ncredible was not impressed and accepted the challenge. Techknight was not the same player that he used to be. It had been more than a decade since he played checkers competitively, however Techknight was confident that he would win. Both players sat down and started to battle in a game of checkers. This was no ordinary checker game.
“No must jump rule.” announced Ncredible. Techknight was puzzled and said,
“There’s no such thing. That will lead to a boring game where no one has to make captures and eventually the game will end in a stalemate.”
“Are we playing or not? You are wasting time”, said Ncredible.
Techknight decided not to argue and started playing the game. Techknight took an early four piece checker lead and was smothering Ncredible. This is when Ncredible started taking advantage of the “no must jump rule.” Techknight blundered several of his checker pieces and was now struggling. Techknight had to move his king to the corner of the board so he may deploy a trap. Ncredible feared entering the trap and decided to move his pieces back and forth. This is when Techknight said,
“The game is a tie, and you are moving your pieces back and forth. We can’t be here all night.” Ncredible refused to accept the draw and continued to move his pieces back and forth.
“This is silly,” Techknight thought to himself.
“This is a TIE!”, yelled Techknight.
Ncredible continued to get Techknight angry to the point where he made a fatal mistake. Ncredible made his finishing moves on Techknight and started to celebrate his victory.
“You didn’t beat me in checkers; that was some “street” checkers game. The rules were different and unfair,” said Techknight. Ncredible said “I won and we played by the same rules” and then offered his hand and said “Good game.” Techknight shook his hand but then he went to a computer to show Ncredible the real rules.
“International, English, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and so on all have a “must jump rule.” Ncredible said “Well, I play with the no jump rule.”
“Then we didn’t play an official checkers game. You have zero chance of beating me in an official rules checkers game,” said Techknight.
“I beat you, stop crying!” said Ncredible. “Do you even know how many squares are on a checker board?” said Techknight. Ncredible quickly said “64.”
Techknight yelled,”Wrong! A great checker player like me sees beyond the 64 squares. What about the 2 by 2 square arrays, 3 by 3 square arrays, 4 by 4, and so on? You only saw the individual 1 by 1 squares.” Ncredible then pondered and asked “So how many squares are there?”
Techknight answered, “Let me show the answer mathematically. There is one 8 by 8 square. There are four 7 by 7 square. There are …” “It is after-school now, NO math please” said Ncredible. “OK, well there are hundreds”, said Techknight
Math Mysteries
1. How many squares are on an 8×8 checkerboard?
1a. If you can find the correct answer, you will get 2 points.
1b. If you can explain the correct answer you will get an additional 3 points.
2. Did Ncredible beat Techknight in “checkers” or “street checkers”? See the official rules of checkers here. 1 point
3. Who would win if Techknight and Ncredible played a checkers game following official rules? 1 point
More Math Mysteries (1 point each):
4. A recipe for punch calls for 4 cups of lemonade for every 6 quarts of fruit juice. How many quarts of fruit juice should Tayler use if she already added 10 cups of lemonade? (Hint: Proportions)
5. There are 7 girls and 15 boys in Alex’s homeroom. What percent of Alex’s homeroom are boys? Round to the nearest percent.
Translate each phrase into an algebraic expression. (1 point each)
6. $15 less than twice the cost of the video game
7. four plus five times a number