STEM Talks: Graphing Insanity

Presenter: Noble Williamson Abstract: In this talk, we will study the puzzle game Instant Insanity. The game is very simple to play, it only involves stacking painted blocks, but thereare nearly 83,000 different ways to stack the blocks and only two solutions so it is extremely difficult to solve by brute force. To solve the puzzle we need to find a different approach which is where graph theory comes in. Graph theory is the study of connections between objects and is a very efficient method for tackling logistical problems such as the famous “Bridges of Königsberg” problem. To apply these concepts to a stack of blocks requires some cleverness but together, we will solve a few seemingly unrelated graph theory problems that will secretly train us in the necessary skills to solve Instant Insanity until we finally put it all together to solve the puzzle.