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.