Kate Jones

Statement

2019 was my 40th year of creating, designing, developing, and producing mathematical puzzles and games as an art form. Each set is researched, sometimes for years, to discover the many challenges inherent in its combinatorial tilings. Each set's theme and concepts, the mathematical principles that define it, are a paradigm of the marvels of the Universe, and so I design them with aesthetic, mathematical, and philosophical qualities that make them a joy to play and explore, inspiring the young and intriguing the most advanced scholar. I have dedicated most of my life to the making and selling of these "math-as-art" sets, and continue so with undiminished excitement in every new discovery. People in general know them as "playable art".

Artworks

The 1072 solutions of the world's oldest documented puzzle, Archimedes' Stomachion, with three colors added with non-matching adjacent color regions--three-color "map coloring". All colors have equal area. Full analysis of color regions included in monograph. Six-month research project by Kate Jones, Joe Marasco, and Alex Streif. Coloring designed by Kate Jones, monograph analyses by Joe Marasco, Ph.D. Of the 1072 solutions based on the 536 original solutions found by Bill Cutler in 2003, only 6 have no color-matched neighboring regions. No solution has all 3 colors joined; 5 regions is min. Lost for 1000 years, Archimedes' puzzle lives again, found in 172-page palimpsest translated by Walters Art Gallery experts over 12 years.