v2 Chapter 165： The Magic Square and the Upside-Down Pyramid

After the cat statue was combined with the slate, the eyes of the statue lit up in an instant, the slate on the ground began to shake rapidly, and the sand on it jumped up. Tom and Dr. Hunter hurried off the slate and stood aside.

The tiles on the slate shook more and more violently, and eventually they dispersed. Originally a one-piece stone slab, now there is a ten centimeter interval between each floor tile, and then the middle part of the floor tile slowly rises, forming a small stone pier of fifty centimeters square, and the whole floor tile is in a "convex" shape. After the formation of the small stone mounds, they have undergone a series of dazzling changes: some cat statues have emerged on each stone mound.

The number of statues on different stone piers is also different. The largest number is 9, and the least is only one. Some statues have blue light in their eyes.

The statues are of different sizes, with three levels of large, medium and small. The small ones are only the size of a thumb, the medium ones are the size of a slap, and the largest ones are about the size of a forearm. The weirdest thing is that there is more than one cat face on these cat statues.

Tom saw that on these delicate statues, there were often more than one cat face, and the largest one actually had four faces.

"What does this mean?" Dr. Hunter showed a puzzled look. He put on gloves and stroked the stone pier lightly, but felt that the stone pier seemed to shake.

He increased his strength and actually turned the stone pier by 90°-you know, such a large stone with a square of 50 centimeters may weigh dozens of pounds, but he turned it in a different direction with a slight push .

The change that surprised them more was yet to come: the cat that had only four eyes that did not glow on the stone pier that Dr. Hunter pushed, but after a push, the eyes of the kitten with only one face lit up. .

Crowd: ?

Dr. Hunt exerted force on his hand and pushed it again, this time the eyes of the one-sided kitten went out, and the eyes of the two-sided kitten lit up, and so on, from two-sided to three-sided, three-sided to four-sided, and four-sided back again One-sided.

Everyone looked at this organ and fell into contemplation.

"There are still 49 stone piers..." Hermione murmured as she walked to the edge of the platform and drew a 7×7 square on the sand with her fingers.

"Do you think the number of cat faces represents numbers?" Dr. Hunter said, rubbing his chin. "One face is a 1, two are a 2, and those bigger cats represent bigger numbers."

"But what numbers do these big cats represent?" Allen frowned.

Tom leaned a little closer and found a detail, the four cat claws, two hind paws and one front paw of the medium-sized statue were very vaguely carved, and it was not even clear that there were a few fingers, but the other front paw was carved. But it is extremely meticulous, and the five fingers above are completely visible.

Tom had a rough idea. In order to verify his conjecture, he found the largest statue again, and found that, sure enough, the two front paws were carved very finely, and you could see that the fingers on the front paws were all stretched out—the so-called "cat's paw blossoms" , and the hind paws are very blurred, you can only see that it is a cat's paw, but you can't see the number of fingers on it.

He shared this discovery with the members of the expedition.

"I take a wild guess, I think the medium statue represents the number five, and the large statue represents the number ten," Tom finally reached his conclusion, pointing to the stone pier next to the one Dr. Hunter pushed , "This stone pier, I think represents the number twelve."

There is a large statue on the stone pier. At the same time, the eyes of the double-sided cat statue are lit up. The large statue represents the number ten, the two-sided cat statue is two, and ten plus two is twelve.

The crowd fell into contemplation. It was Dr. Hunt who broke the silence first: "Let's write down these numbers first."

So everyone got busy, converting the illuminated statues into numbers one by one, and then filling them in the squares drawn by Hermione on the ground.

Soon, some numbers were filled in the phalanx on the ground.

【picture】

Hermione looked at the picture with a sense of deja vu. "It's like a variant of a math puzzle I've seen—"

"Seventh-order magic square." Tom and Dr. Hunt said in unison.

The magic square is a very old number game magic square. Its rule is to fill in the non-repeating numbers from 1 to N squares in the N×N square in turn, requiring the same row, the same column and the same opposite corner. The sum of the numbers on the line is equal.

"Seven lines, an odd magic square, can be solved using the Robb method." Dr. Hunter gave the solution. Seeing that everyone except Tom was confused, he began to patiently explain the so-called Rob method to everyone.

This method can only solve magic squares of odd order, that is, magic squares with an odd number of grids in each row.

"There is a formula for this method: the first line of numbers is centered, and the holes are filled in order to the right. After the table is reversed and pressed back, the next one is empty in special circumstances."

These four lines represent the four rules of Robb's Law:

1. The first number must be in the middle of the first line

2. Write the numbers in an increasing manner to the upper right corner in order

3. If the number is beyond the magic square, put the number at the farthest end of the row or column

4. If there is a special situation, such as there is already a number in the upper right corner, then write the number down, and the top corner exceeds the magic square is also a special case

According to these four rules, they first looked at the fourth grid in the first row of the magic square, and found that the stone pier there was in a dormant state, so they pushed it, woke it up, and adjusted the number on it to 1, Next, according to rule 2, the number 2 should be filled in the upper right corner, but the upper right corner is out of line, so according to rule 3, 2 will be placed at the bottom of the row.

In this way, Tom and the others filled all the forty-nine squares, so that the sum of the horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines in the square is all When the last number "49" is filled in , this piece of sand has changed again.

First there was a dull loud noise, and then the whole piece of sand began to tremble. The level of the sand dropped rapidly, and even formed a huge vortex, as if someone had unplugged a cistern full of water.

The sand disappeared quickly, no one knew where they went, and the stone walls on the edge of the sand gradually appeared. In less than a minute, the sand was empty, and the space below the sand shocked everyone: when they looked down, they saw a blue sky.

"Merlin..."

"Oh, God……"

"God..."

"Damn it..."

Different identities, different beliefs, but all chose to express the most sincere sighs. All of this in front of them was beyond their understanding - even the two wizards present were no exception.

After taking their eyes away from the sky, they saw a white pyramid still standing under the dome.