As you fill out a crossword, it may well abruptly shift from fiendishly tough to very simple. That is much like the way in which some bodily techniques bear a part transition – however in comparison with them, these puzzles could also be mathematically distinctive.
Whereas fixing a crossword someday, Alexander Hartmann on the College of Oldenburg in Germany got here up with a private problem: he wished to search out sufficient phrases to create one giant, related island of letters. Then he realised that he had unintentionally stumbled upon a sort of “percolation problem”, which was acquainted to…