I've talked about magic squares quite a bit before, but the variety of ways people develop to present the magic squares never fails to amaze me.

As I mentioned in my previous post, this pastThursday would have been 96th Martin Gardner's birthday.

Martin Gardner, of course, loved magic squares, and covered them numerous times in his writings. In honor of this, Richard Wiseman performed a magic square at a recent event known as the Martin Gardner Mind Party. Watch how he takes it beyond just the total, and relates everything to Martin Gardner's life:



This, like most presentations, was done with a 4 by 4 magic square. This is largely because an array of 16 numbers is large enough to be impressive, but also quick enough to perform that it remains engaging to an audience.

However, there are those venturesome souls out there who do like to take on larger magic squares. In the following video from Germany, performer Robin Wersig asks for a 3-digit number, getting 843 as a reply, and then asks for a starting square, for which D2 is given. He then proceeds to start at square D2, and creates an 8 by 8 magic square totaling 843 in every row and column, all while performing a Knight's Tour!



If that's still not large and impressive enough for you, how about a 25 by 25 magic square, totaling 7,825 in every direction? It really is incredible the levels to which people have taken magic squares.

To help untangle your brain from these mind-boggling magic squares, here are some squares that add up to different numbers in every direction, yet are still strangely impressive.