Planarity: A fun new game

Tired of Sudoku? Looking for a new challenge? Boy have I got something for you then. Check out Planarity. I really like this game. If you’ve ever sat through a discreet mathematics class and wondered where and when you’ll ever use graph theory, this is your answer. Basically the site presents you with a series of nodes/vertices and you have to rearrange them until the edges (i.e. the lines between the nodes) do not overlap. The result is called a planar graph. The first couple of levels are pretty easy, but with every level more nodes and more edges are added. This makes each level more challenging in that it takes longer to solve than the one before it. Oh, that and stopping. Once you start playing its hard to stop. I closed my eyes once and I started to imagine moving the nodes around… That’s when I knew this was a cool game. :) Its a great idea for a website and a really fun game. I’ve always liked graph theory, there’s just something cool about it. Now thanks to this site, we have a new way to play around with the graphs and learn more about them. Additionally this site serves as a good introduction to other ideas in graphing like cycles, bipartite graphs, and minimal spanning trees.