(1) More than 100 years later, at a conference in Atlanta, Georgia, this year, Erik Demaine, 27, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, went one better.
(2) And Demaine could not have had a more appreciative audience.
(3) Demaine, 6ft 2in, with a ponytail and beard, has for the past 10 years been tantalised with the problem posed by Dudeney.
(4) Boubakar Hamadoun, editor of the Bamako-based newspaper Mali Demain, who has reporters based in the north, said there were Islamists controlling Konna "but they are integrated into the population".
(5) Even though Gardner was in his 60s by the time Demaine was born, the young professor says he was influenced by Gardner's books and philosophy.
(6) Demaine's father is a sculptor, and an aesthetic sense has been passed on to his son - some of his origami models are at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
(7) "There are Islamists controlling Konna, but they are integrated into the population, it is very difficult for the army to fight them," said Boubakar Hamadoun, editor of the Bamako-based newspaper Mali Demain, who has reporters based in the north.
(8) Demaine argues that mathematicians are creative artists.
(9) Demaine made his first major mathematical breakthrough when, at the age of 17, he and his collaborators proved that it is possible to create any straight-sided shape by folding a piece of paper and making just one cut.
(10) It might appear that such a result would be useful only to schoolchildren making complex Christmas decorations, but in fact Demaine's work has found uses in industry, especially in car air bag design.
Demesne
Definition:
(n.) A lord's chief manor place, with that part of the lands belonging thereto which has not been granted out in tenancy; a house, and the land adjoining, kept for the proprietor's own use.