Although he is neither a mathematics graduate nor a teacher, TN Mahesh, a business development officer of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), is adept at creating ‘magic square’ puzzles that have engaged the attention of school students and math lovers in Chennai. According to Mahesh, a magic square is an arrangement of numerals set in equal rows and columns and positioned in such a way that the sum of numbers in each row, column or diagonal is constant, with each number included only once. The challenge is to arrange the numerals to arrive at the magic conclusion. Currently, children in eight schools across the city are stretching their maths skills to solve Mahesh’s magic square conundrum.

Newspeg. Mahesh has done pioneering work in scaling up 4×4 magic squares into 8×8 and 12×12 magic squares and created puzzles out of them which are posted on his website www.magicsquare puzzles.com. He has also copyrighted the “mimic method and game magic square puzzles’’ from where he derives his puzzles. To get children interested in maths and help them solve these puzzles, Mahesh has also produced a 50-minute documentary titled Magic Square Puzzles.

Direct talk. Building magic squares and solving related puzzles is recreational mathematics. But Mahesh believes that they can cure children of maths phobia. “My puzzles are a play-way method of learning mathematics and the inherent symmetry of the magic squares kindles children’s interest. In the free work-shops I have conducted, the response of students has been very enthusiastic,’’ he says.

History. A chemistry graduate of Madras University, Mahesh started his career as a medical representative in a pharmaceutical company where he served for two years before joining LIC in 1990. His interest in numerical symmetry was aroused when his mother Indira Narasinga Rao scaled up the 4×4 magic square — found in an Hindu almanac — into a 1000×1000 magic square using numbers 1-1000,000, and was cited by the Limca Book of Records in 2001 for her achievement. Mahesh helped her write Magic of Magic Squares (2007) which discusses odd and even magic squares, and became keenly interested in the subject. Although inspired by his mother, Mahesh has evolved his own distinctive calculus. “I did a lot of research on double even order squares and the magic squares I have scaled up are all divisible by 2 and 4. With these I can create any number of puzzles,” he says.

Future plans. Mahesh is keen on gifting his puzzles to all schools, so that children learn to solve them and shed their fear of mathematics. “I am willing to conduct workshops in any school which meets my travel expenses. I’m also willing to offer my puzzles to magazines, newspapers and websites for publication. In the near future, I plan to come out with an interesting CD, a book and apps for iphones so that people get addicted to this unique mode of edutainment,’’ says this unassuming maths missionary.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

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