Earlier today, a set of numerical challenges was set to celebrate the arrival of 2026. The puzzles involve using only the four basic operations (+, -, ×, ÷), brackets, exponentiation, and concatenation. Exponentiation allows a digit to be used as an exponent, such as 11, while concatenation enables joining digits together, like forming 11 from two 1s.
The puzzles were thanks to Inder Taneja, author of the website numbers-magic.com. He has many more facts about the coming year in his paper '26 and 2026 in Numbers and Magic Squares'.
The puzzle setter has been providing puzzles on alternate Mondays since 2015 and is always looking for great puzzles. Readers are invited to suggest puzzles via email.
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