Henry Ernest Dudeney, a nineteenth century Englishman, has been rightly called "the puzzle king."
One of his puzzles was The Six Pointed Star in which you must place the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 in the circles below so that the sum
of each row of numbers equals 26.
Dudeney stated in his book, 536 Puzzles & Curious Problems, that there were 74 unique solutions and six of those were unique solutions where the
outer vertices also add up to 26.
Since then, six additional unique solutions have been found.
Colin Bowey sent in an xcel spreadsheet that shows the 80 unique solutions, each of which can be displayed 12 ways by rotation and reflections,
so there are 960 solutions overall.
The 6 unique solutions where the vertices = 26 can be represented 12 ways with rotations and reflections given a total of 72 solutions.
Click here to download Colin's spreadsheet
You may have to click on OPTIONS and ENABLE MACROS in the spreadsheet to get it to run.
Click here for a very detailed web page about Order 6 Magic Stars.
Here is a list of the six unique solutions where the sum of the outer vertices equals 26:
Here are the other 74 unique solutions:
