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If you were born 100 years ago, you might have played with a "new" puzzle that was first sold as a toy in 1883 created by French mathematician Edouard Lucas. It was called the Tower of Hanoi or Tower of Brahma. Lucas was inspired by a legend that tells of a Hindu temple where the conical or pyramid puzzle was used for the mental discipline of young priests.

We conclude our exploration of the ancient challenge of knight’s tours with the uncrossed tour or non-intersecting tour.

Your task is to find the longest possible path of a knight (using standard chess knight moves) in such a way that the path does not intersect itself. 

Knight’s tours were invented around the time of the introduction of chess. The earliest recorded knight’s tour on a 8 x 8 board was in a book published by Iraqi mathematician al-Adli ar-Rumi in 840 A.D. Many of the greatest mathematicians have explored knight’s tours like Euler, Taylor, de Moivre, and LaGrange.

Many of the Mathletes watched the Olympics at Sochi and marveled at the high level of competition. The American media reported that USA came in second in the overall standings. Of course, Russia, the host country won overall honors. Most of the American media reported total medals. Using this method, they valued a bronze equal to a silver and gold.

However, in Norway, it was a different story. They reported Norway in second place using Gold medals as the scale. Norway had the second most gold medals after Russia.