Pretenders Hex

The Great Pretenders

Sarah Treleaven | Toronto Life | 14th February 2024 | U

On a case of “pretendian” fraud in Canada. The Tanzanian mother of a pair of academically gifted twins falsely registered them as adoptees, listing an Inuit woman as their “birth mother”. No proof was required. This made them eligible for many educational and business subsidies intended for indigenous people. They received at least $160,000, until online sleuths cracked the case (6,200 words)

Hex Marks The Spot

Jon-Paul Dyson | Museum Of Play | 13th December 2019 | U

Games in which pieces are moved by being picked up, such as chess, work well on a board divided into squares. But as simulation games became popular after WW2, this no longer worked. Pieces in these games slide from place to place, mimicking army units occupying territory. The mathematician John Nash and the polymath Piet Hein independently arrived at the same solution: hexagons (900 words)