Gaston Tarry and multimagic squares

A. Donald Keedwell · The Mathematical Gazette · 2011

It is well known that G. Tarry [1] was the first to publish a proof that the famous thirty-six officers problem posed by L. Euler [2] in 1779 has no solution but it appears to be less well known that he was the first to devise a systematic method of constructing bimagic and trimagic squares, that is, magic squares which remain magic when each entry is replaced by its square and, in the case of trimagic squares, also when each entry is replaced by its cube. Tarry's method was outlined in [3] and was explained and slightly improved upon in a book by E. Cazalas [4] published in Paris in 1934. Recently, there has been renewed interest in this topic.

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