Blog
Articles on learning, mental maths, and the thinking behind the games on this site.
24 October 2026
enJust Over a Marathon in Five and a Half Years: The Maths of Perseverance’s Mars Record
NASA’s Perseverance rover has now driven farther than any vehicle on another world: 45.22 kilometres. That is just over one marathon in five and a half years. Here’s the congak behind the record, from metres per day to why it passed the old mark only 31 metres into its record-setting drive.
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20 October 2026
enECRL Opens 12 December: The Fare Maths From Gombak to Kota Bharu
The East Coast Rail Link starts passenger services on 12 December, with 30% off economy tickets for the first month. Here's the congak: the average speed, what a ticket costs per kilometre, what a family of four pays, and why a 50% discount and a 30% discount would never add up to 80%.
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16 October 2026
enThe 801st Unit: Why One Extra kWh Can Add RM39 to Your Electricity Bill
Until 31 December, homes using 800 kWh or less a month pay no fuel surcharge on their electricity bill. But once you cross the line, the surcharge applies to every unit, so the 801st kWh brings almost RM39 with it. Here's the congak, and what changes when the line moves back to 600 kWh in January.
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12 October 2026
enAPI 180 Shuts Schools. But 180 of What? The Maths Behind Malaysia’s Haze Index
Schools close when the Air Pollutant Index passes 180. But 180 of what? The number is the worst of six pollutants, averaged over 24 hours and run through a scale that stretches at the bottom, so API 100 means about six times the haze of API 50, not twice.
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8 October 2026
enA Cubic Kilometre of Ice to Catch a Ghost: The Numbers Behind This Year’s Physics Nobel
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics went to the physicist behind IceCube, a detector made of Antarctic ice that catches particles passing through you by the trillion every second. Its numbers are huge — and every one of them can be made sense of with nothing more than congak.
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4 October 2026
enLights Out at Sepang: The Random Wait That Decides an F1 Start
Formula 1 is back at Sepang for the first time since 2017. Every race starts with the same test: five red lights, then a wait of anywhere between 0.2 and 3 seconds. That random wait is the cleverest part of the procedure, and your brain has a trick for beating it.
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30 September 2026
enLuck Barely Matters: The Maths of a Perfect Game of Memory Match
With no memory at all, clearing ten pairs takes a hundred moves on average. With a perfect memory it takes about sixteen, and almost never more than seventeen. Everything between those two numbers is you.
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26 September 2026
enSimon Is Quietly on Your Side: The Memory Trick Built Into Every Round
Simon looks like a working memory test, and on paper you should run out of room after about five steps. Most players go further, because the game repeats itself — and a psychologist showed in 1961 what repetition does to a sequence you are not even trying to learn.
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22 September 2026
enGive Away Two Boxes to Win: The Hidden Theory of Dots and Boxes
The game everyone doodles on the back of an exercise book has real theory behind it — enough that a Berkeley mathematician wrote a book on it. The central move is one almost nobody makes: deliberately handing your opponent two boxes.
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18 September 2026
enDon’t Start With E: The Maths of a Good Hangman Guess
Everyone opens with E, and on this word list that is the wrong move. The letter frequencies you were taught measure the wrong thing — here is the statistic that actually matters, and the five guesses that cannot lose.
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14 September 2026
enForty Words a Minute: What a Typing Test Actually Measures
The average adult types around 40 words a minute — except a “word” in that sentence is not a word at all, it is five characters. Here is what the number really means, why accuracy beats speed, and why your test score flatters you.
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10 September 2026
enSolved in 2007: Checkers, and the Champion Who Lost Seven Games in 45 Years
Checkers has 500 billion billion positions, and in 2007 a program finished proving that perfect play by both sides is a draw. The better story is the man who spent his life almost never losing — and what happened when he played the machine.
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8 September 2026
enSolved in 1988: Why the First Player Always Wins at Connect Four
Connect Four has 4.5 trillion positions, and every one of them has been worked out. Open in the centre column and you win with perfect play. Open anywhere else and you draw or lose — here is why, and how to use it.
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6 September 2026
enA Fifth of a Second: The Real Limits of Human Reaction Time
A good score on a reaction test is somewhere around 250ms, and almost none of that is thinking. Here is where the milliseconds actually go, why sprinters are disqualified below 0.100s, and why your phone is quietly part of your score.
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4 September 2026
enThe Stroop Effect: Why Your Brain Reads a Word Before It Sees the Colour
Print the word RED in blue ink and everyone slows down — by around three-quarters again on the original 1935 test. Here is why reading wins the race, what the delay actually measures, and the extra twist for anyone who reads in two languages.
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2 September 2026
en255,168 Games, One Correct Result: The Maths Behind Tic-Tac-Toe
There are 255,168 possible games of tic-tac-toe and only 765 genuinely different positions. That is why the game is solved, why perfect play always draws — and why every win you have ever had came from somebody's mistake.
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29 August 2026
enThe Walls Can't Kill You: How to Get Good at Snake
On a board where the edges wrap around, everything you learned from the Nokia version is wrong. The only thing that can end your run is you.
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25 August 2026
enFive Minutes a Day Beats Two Hours on Sunday
Cramming feels productive and mostly isn't. Here's the research on why short daily practice sticks — and how to actually build the habit.
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20 August 2026
enWordle Strategy: Why Your Second Guess Matters More Than Your First
Everyone argues about the perfect opening word. The real gains are in what you do next — reading grey tiles properly, covering fresh letters, and escaping the _IGHT trap without losing the round.
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12 August 2026
enMinesweeper Is Not a Guessing Game: The Logic Behind the Numbers
Most people click randomly and blame bad luck when they lose. But nearly every move in Minesweeper is decidable — here are the rules and patterns that turn guessing into deduction.
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5 August 2026
enHow to Calculate Your GPA and CGPA (Malaysian 4.00 Scale)
GPA is this semester. CGPA is your whole degree. Here's exactly how both are worked out on the 4.00 scale, with a step-by-step example — and the mistakes that trip most students up.
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29 July 2026
enDigit Span: The 100-Year-Old Memory Test Hiding in a Simple Game
Psychologists have used the same short test to measure working memory for over a century. Here's what your digit span says about you, and how to train it.
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22 July 2026
en2048: The Simple Game That Trains You to Think Several Moves Ahead
Swipe, merge, repeat — 2048 looks trivial, but the players who do well are quietly practising planning and pattern recognition. Here's how it works.
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19 July 2026
enLevel Up: Earn Points, Unlock Badges, and Climb the Leaderboard
Every quiz, Congak session, and game you play now earns you points. Here's how the new points, tiers, badges, and global leaderboard work.
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16 July 2026
enWhy Sudoku Is Good for Your Brain (and How to Get Started)
Sudoku looks like a numbers game, but it's really a workout for your logic and focus. Here's what the science says, plus how to start if you're a beginner.
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8 July 2026
enDid You Know? Being Bilingual Makes You Smarter
Growing up switching between Bahasa Malaysia and English isn't just useful — science says it actively improves your brain's executive functions.
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1 July 2026
enWhat Is Congak? Malaysia's Mental Math Tradition
Congak is a uniquely Malaysian mental arithmetic tradition taught in primary schools. Here's why it still matters — and how to sharpen your skills.
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