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Re: Lord Kelvin, lunars, and Tripos comedy
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2026 Jul 10, 10:31 -0700
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2026 Jul 10, 10:31 -0700
Alex, you have convinced me that a lunars puzzle could have found a place on a Cambridge Mathematics Tripos late in the 19th century --not because it had any math value, per se, but because it was a sort of "Classics puzzle", and this was certainly still a Classics-focused education. Antique was not bad! Although lunars were antique, they were still a good math and astronomy game. :)
I also see from those example you found that there were more open-ended questions on the Math Tripos that could be answered with a technical essay rather than just a "prove this theorem" or "work this problem" sort of exam.
Frank Reed
