"It's a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. October's list includes the microstructural differences between regular and gluten-free spaghetti, capturing striking snakes in action, the mystery behind the formation of Martian gullies, and-for all you word game enthusiasts-an intriguing computational proof of the highest possible scoring Boggle board."
"Sometimes those projects involve classic games like Boggle, in which players find as many words as they can from a 4×4 grid of 16 lettered cubic dice, within a given time limit. Software engineer Dan Vanderkam alerted us to a a preprint he posted to the physics arXiv, detailing his quest to find the Boggle board configuration that yields the highest possible score."
A monthly collection presents diverse scientific items spanning food physics, animal imaging, planetary geology, and recreational mathematics. Microstructural contrasts between regular and gluten-free spaghetti are examined. High-speed imaging captures striking snake bite dynamics. Investigations address the origins and formation mechanisms of gullies on Mars. Software engineer Dan Vanderkam produced a computational proof for a Boggle board configuration that scores 3,625 points. The board enables more than 1,000 possible words, with "replastering" as the longest. A prior 1982 attempt found an optimal board scoring 2,195 points. Vanderkam's solution involved grouping board configurations with similar patterns into classes.
Read at Ars Technica
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