Instant Insanity

Abstract

First paragraph: Many years ago I was introduced to a terrific way to teach students a little about graph theory and have a lot of fun at the same time. The unit explains how to solve the famous puzzle called “Instant Insanity”. This puzzle has been around for nearly a century and involves setting up four blocks in a tower so each of the four sides shows a different color. There are 41,472 ways to randomly set up the four blocks, so trying to do it by trial and error can drive a person crazy (hence the name). There is a mathematical method for setting up the blocks, which makes the puzzle easy to solve.