The anniversary of the magic hexagon (Q2837019)

The author gives an outline of the history of magic hexagons as well as magic triangles and magic squares. He reports that the hexagon HC(5), studied by Ernst von Haselberg in 1887, has a special attribute: It is the only magic one in the series of centred tessallations of hexagons obtained by the ring method. The author introduces zero-sum magic figures which contain numbers from \(-n\) to \(+n\) for a natural number \(n\), provided that the number of cells is even, and zero is dropped. He gives several examples which were found by his students as solutions of exercises. Based on these figures the author creates a new puzzle-game: Gurami, which is designed similar to a Sudoku. The reader is asked to solve some guramis. Nice. This is an article of mathematical recreation in the best tradition of Martin Gardner.