The Rules


These classic figures of computer gaming are armed with laser beams and ready for a battle royal. Your task: Distribute them on the grid so when they fire their lasers horizontally, vertically, and diagonally, the beams do not hit
any teammates (with the same color). Multiple solutions are possible.


Ivan Moscovich, author of 1,000 Playthinks, describes this brain-teaser as a combination of two "seemingly unrelated classic puzzles, the Eight Queens Problem and the Magic Latin Color Square."

Over the course of his amazing life, Ivan Moscovich has been a railroad supervisor, a museum director, an inventor, a researcher for the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and an artist. But math and science puzzles are his greatest love, as shown by his recent book, 1,000 Playthinks (Workman Publishing).