by Bill Graham

Math puzzles ought to be fun. When the word “math” shows up, people think, “Uh oh, serious stuff is coming!” Not necessarily. What could be less serious than a limerick?

When I tried to do this puzzle with my algebra classes, I wanted to give them an example of a limerick. I found I didn’t know any that I dared recite. The rhyme pattern is AABBA, and the rhythm or meter of each line has to be precise.

I tried making up an example of a limerick suitable for this format but I had trouble divorcing myself from the limerick’s unseemly history. Undeniably, there is something powerful about this format that lends itself so perfectly to humorous and off-color rhymes. Here’s the best I could do within these constraints.

Two people from Kalamazoo,
Tried loving while in a canoe.
They couldn’t move much,
Cause of tipping and such,
So they resolved to quit pitching woo.

Here’s a question I first heard from Mira Costa students on-line. What limerick does this math equation represent?

A silly sentence

Write a word name in each blank to make the following sentence true. (In other words, write “five” in a blank, not 5.)

This sentence contains …… Ts, …… Es and …… Ss.

What makes this fun and difficult is that the words that you write may change the number of the letters. If you don’t start smiling while trying this, you are taking it too seriously.
Hint: Think of words that stand for the first three numbers in the limerick.