-----Original Message----- From: asimovd@aol.com [mailto:asimovd@aol.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 8:05 PM To: math-fun@mailman.xmission.com Subject: Re: [math-fun] misc + (Riemann surfaces & string theory)

1. Rich writes:

<< One of my favorite word puzzles is finding "consecutive" words, where the last letter is incremented to make a new word.

CONVEX CONVEY ...

...

...

Just wondering in what sense you mean "consecutive" (since e.g. CONVEXITY would appear between these words alphabetically).

Imagine an odometer-like device, with 26 letters instead of 10 digits on each reel. Just after "CONVEX" appears, the last letter increments from X to Y, producing "CONVEY". To look at it another way, it is consecutive among six-character strings.

-------------------------------------------------------------

2. The NY Times had a nice short article by Dennis Overbye in Sunday's Week in Review section (June 29) that is a paean to the joys of math. (It's nice to have at least one math fan writing for the public.) This is freely available through next Saturday on the web; sorry I can't dig up the URL right now (but just go to www.nytimes.com and it should be easy to find, esp. with advanced search).

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/29/weekinreview/29OVER.html Nice article; thanks for pointing it out. Andy