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The Winners of the 2021 One-Liner Competition

The Wolfram Language is renowned for simplicity and brevity, and nowhere was that more apparent than at the 10th annual One-Liner Competition, held at the Wolfram Virtual Technology Conference. The contest challenges conference attendees to create the best program possible in 128 characters or fewer (the original length limit of a tweet). With prizes awarded for the three best submissions, competition this year was fierce, but the judges, with only minor bloodshed, were able to settle on a slate of awardees.
Paco Jain, Research Programmer, Wolfram|Alpha Scientific Content
Education & Academic

A New Method of Bell Ringing Using Mathematica to Discover Wolf Wrap

English bell ringing (called change ringing) has many connections to mathematics, notably to group theory and Hamiltonian cycles. My wife, Joan Hutchinson, is an ardent bell ringer (having rung in both England and North America), and I knew the basics of this ancient craft. A recent puzzle book by Mark Davies [1] inspired me to bring Mathematica’s integer-linear programming (ILP) capabilities to bear, but I wanted to go beyond puzzles and develop a new ringing method that would be of interest to the bell-ringing community.
Stan Wagon, Guest Author
Computation & Analysis

From Plant Roots to Deep Space Wolfram Community Computational Explorations

For the past few months, Wolfram Community members have shared their computational explorations on topics ranging from computational art and games to original, published research. I’ll comment here on just a few of their many interesting examples. Please feel free to share your ideas with us at Wolfram Community, and let’s explore the world computationally.
Mads Bahrami, Outreach & Communications Manager
Education & Academic

Class Notes, Quizzes and Weather Alerts with Mathematica and the Wolfram Language

Using Wolfram technologies has always been a part of my working process—from asking Wolfram|Alpha questions in college to using the Wolfram Cloud to set up reminders and forms in my everyday work. Nowadays, I think about the ways that our users can employ our technologies. I like to build on things that I perhaps should have used to improve my efficiency during my time as a student or faculty member, or even for tasks outside of work in my day-to-day life.
Santiago Camacho, Academic Key Account Manager, Sales & Services
Current Events & History

The Solution of the Zodiac Killer’s 340-Character Cipher

In 2020, Melbourne, Australia, had a 112-day lockdown of the entire city to help stop the spread of COVID-19. The wearing of masks was mandatory and we were limited to one hour a day of outside activity. Otherwise, we were stuck in our homes. This gave me lots of time to look into interesting problems I’d been putting off for years.

I was inspired by a YouTube video by David Oranchak, which looked at the Zodiac Killer’s 340-character cipher (Z340), which is pictured below. This cipher is considered one of the holy grails of cryptography, as at the time the cipher had resisted attacks for 50 years, so any attempts to find a solution were truly a moonshot.

Sam Blake, Guest Author
Education & Academic

3D-Printed Jewelry Made with the Wolfram Language Showcases the Beauty of Mathematics

I enjoy turning mathematical concepts into wearable pieces of art. That’s the idea behind my business, Hanusa Design. I make unique products that feature striking designs inspired by the beauty and precision of mathematics. These pieces are created using the range of functionality in the Wolfram Language. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, we recently launched Spikey earrings in the Wolfram Store, which are available in rose gold–plated brass and red nylon. In this blog, I’ll give a look under the hood and discuss how an idea becomes a product through the Wolfram Language.

Christopher Hanusa, Guest Author
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