Recreation is the employment of time in a non-profitable way, in many ways also a therapeutic refreshment of one's body or mind. While leisure is more likely a form of entertainment or rest, recreation is active and participatory, but in a refreshing and diverting manner. As people in the world's wealthier regions lead increasingly sedentary life styles, the need for recreation has grown. The rise of so called active vacations exemplify this.
Recreation, play, and fun are not the preserve of humans; nearly all creatures indulge in this to some extent. Play is essential for the development of skills, the most basic of which are motor skills in young creatures.
The choice of hours for recreation is for employees restricted by the requirements of, and agreements with, the employer (working time), and for students restricted by school hours. For people with their own business it is also restricted by the requirements of the work, such as the opening hours of the business based on wishes of customers, laws, and customs.
More on [ Recreation ]
Geometry and Modulars :: Origami
Puzzle Games
Mathematics :: Science
Fractal Art :: Chaos and Fractals
Sculpture and Art :: Geometry

Famous Curves Index - Curves you've heard of and curves you haven't, from Astroid to the Witch of Agnesi.
A Mathematician's Aesthetics - In his classic A Mathematician's Apology, G. H. Hardy likened mathematics to poetry and painting. This site elaborates on Hardy's remark with quotations from Stevens, Klee, Fry, and Focillon. Links to related sites are given.
Meta Description: [ Some philosophical background
for my mathematical work - S. H. Cullinane. ]
Critical Math - Articles and images on recreational math from fractals and magic squares to mathemorchids and Galois.
Cryptarithms Online - 70 brain-teasers; a Primer on Cryptarithmetic; books and links to alphametics on the Web.
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CuriousMath - Include news, math tricks, methods, facts, trivia, mostly posted by users.
Meta Description: [ math is an attitude ]
David Singmaster: List of Available Material - Teaching and recreational items in this personal collection.
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Eureka - The annual journal of the Archimedeans, the mathematical society of the University of Cambridge. It regularly contains articles on recreational mathematics.
Meta Description: [ Back issues of Eureka for sale ]
Fair Dice - Contains a complete list of all possible Fair Dice, most of which are not cubes. Includes pictures.
Fast Arithmetic Tips - Three categories: defensive - know to check an answer, offensive - fast mental calculations, and math magic.
Fibonacci numbers and the Pascal triangle - The relation between Fibonacci numbers and Pascal's triangle. English/German/Serbian.
Meta Description: [ The relation between Fibonacci numbers and Pascal triangle. Fibonacci numbers and Golden Section.Lucas numbers and Golden Section. The relation between Fibonacci numbers and Lucas numbers. ]
Final Answers - Numerous facts including formulas, magic tricks, fallacies, recreations compiled by Dr. Gerald P. Michon.
Meta Description: [ A selection of questions posed publicly,
with 'final' answers by Gérard P. Michon, Ph.D. (mathematics, physics, etc.). ]
Gardner Index - Rough index to the fifteen books containing Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games articles from Scientific American.
Meta Description: [ Gardner Index ]
Geometric Packing Problems - By Joseph Malkevitch: Given one shape X how and when can one pack identical copies of this shape into another shape Y?
Meta Description: [ Welcome to Joseph Malkevitch's Web Pages. York College, a public, four-year liberal arts institution that has been at the forefront of higher education in New York since its inception in 1966. A Senior College of the City University of New York, York College is a superb undergraduate non-resident... ]
HAKMEM - A collection of problems from MIT. Work reported herein was conducted at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology research program.
Iamond - A page on polyiamond puzzles. Includes many pages on tessellation.
Look and Say Sequence Generator - Creates a special kind of summation formula created by John Conway.
Meta Description: [ A generator for Look and Say audioactive sequences,
written in JavaScript, with further references ]
MAA Library List in Recreational Mathematics - Book list split into categories. Includes title, author, publisher and date information about each book.
MAT 007 I News - A newsletter edited by undergraduates of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Toronto. Includes some online copies.
Math Forum: 2001 Mathematics Game - A contest that asks to write all integers from 1 to 100 using only the digits 2,0,0,1 and arithmetic operations.
Math Forum: 2002 Mathematics Game - A contest where the contestants have to write all integers from 1 to 100 using only the digits 2,0,0,2 and arithmetic operations.
Math Forum: Algebra Problem of the Week - View this week's algebra problem or those of previous weeks.
Meta Description: [ A weekly interactive math
project. You can answer challenging questions every week from the Internet. This
can be an individual or class project., The Math Forum is the comprehensive resource for math
education on the Internet. Some features include a K-12 math expert help service, an
ext... ]
Math in the Movies - A guide to major motion pictures with scenes of real mathematics.
Math Magic By Computer - Interactive java puzzles and activities in different mathematical topics.
Mathematical Diversions - Mostly original diversions in mathematics and word play.
Mathematical Fiction - A list of mathematical fictional movies, books, stories, plays and shows. Split into categories including children's books. Can be sorted by mathematical content and literary quality.
Mathematical Induction - A page of uncommon problems, most closely connected with number theory.
Mathematical Lego Sculptures - Designed and built by Andrew Lipson. Images and LDraw files.
Mathematical Problems - Problem Solving - Mathematics Hots (Problems) by Bruno Kevius
Meta Description: [ Mathematical Problems, Problem Solving, Mathematical Competitions ]
Mathematical Quotation Server - Furman University Mathematical Quotation Server - random or searchable math quotes.
Mathematical Quotation Server - A collection of mathematical quotations culled from many sources. You may conduct a keyword search through the quotation database.
Mathematical Spectrum - Mathematical Spectrum is a magazine for students and teachers of mathematics in universities, colleges and schools worldwide. It may be read by anybody interested in mathematics as a recreation.
Mathematics in Art and Architecture - An interdisciplinary course on mathematics in art and architecture.
Meta Description: [ An interdisciplinary course on mathematics in art and architecture. ]
Mathematics Museum (Japan) - At Mathematics Museum (Japan) you would be surprised how interesting mathematics is. You will find exhibition rooms produced by Japanese researchers and educators.
Mathematik - Individual pages on different topics in Mathematics. Examples : group theory, dynamical systems theory, geometry or number theory.
Meta Description: [ Pages in Mathematics, Mathematik seiten ]
Mathematische Basteleien - Topics include Flexagon, Soma Cube, Pentominos, Cube-it, Rubik's Cube, Froebel's Star, Tangram, House of Santa Claus, Chronogram, Numeric Palindromes, Latticework of Letters. English/German.
Meta Description: [ Flexagons,Soma Cube, Pentominos,Tetracube, Happy Cube, Rubik's Cube, Snake Cube, Froebel Star,Tangram, Rubik's Magic, Jacob's Ladder, Devil's Knot, 15Puzzle, Kaleidocycles, Origami Cube, A Strip of Paper Only, Monogram, House of Santa Claus, Chronograms, Numeric Palindromes, Magic Square, Kaprek... ]
Mathmos - Includes puzzles, jokes, quotations, poetry, and FAQs.
Meta Description: [ A place for recreational mathematics, fun and trivia. Includes puzzles, jokes, quotations, data, and poetry. ]
Maze Classification and Algorithms - A short description of mazes and how to create them. Definition of different mazetypes and their algorithms.
Mudd Math Fun Facts - An archive of interesting math facts for use in the classroom or just for fun. Browse by subject, difficulty, keywords, or try the random feature. Based at Harvey Mudd College.
Meta Description: [ Mathematics ideas, puzzles, and fun
facts that will change the way you think. ]
Number Recreations by Shyam Sunder Gupta - Features interesting facts about different numbers. Includes favorite related links.
Meta Description: [ The Place for Number lovers , Number theorists, interested in Number Recreations, computational number theory and recreational number theory ]
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On the Puzzles with Polyhedra and Numbers - This is an article on a set of didactical games edited by the Portuguese Mathematical Society (SPM).
One Metaphor Fits All - Explains Conway's audioactive decay that is generated by a particular kind of sequence. Includes illustrations and related resources.
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Origami Mathematics - Information on the mathematics of paper folding.
Properties of Dice - Polyhedral dice and their properties.
Recmath - Includes pages on magic squares and polyomino patterns and contains related java applets.
Meta Description: [ A collection of Recreational Mathematics topics including magic squares, polyominos, puzzles and projection drawings. ]
Recreational and Educational Computing - A newsletter with programs, including optional supplemental PC disk. All back issues are available. Topics include puzzles and teasers, BASIC programming, letters, graphics, fractals, challenges, recreation, reviews, word-play, humor, tips, solutions, and Mathemagical Black Holes.
Recreational Mathematics - Links collected at CAMEL, the Canadian Mathematical Society website.
Recreational Mathematics (David Eppstein) - An extensive list of web resources for recreational math.
Recreational Mathematics Forum - A forum for posting messages about math recreations. Hosted at Delphi.
Recreational Mathematics Topics - By Steven Dutch. Symmetry, Crystals, Polyhedra and Tilings; Pythagorean triplets and other things about sums of powers; Geometry Classics.
Roman Numerals - Contains a introduction to Roman numerals including a translation of the digits used and a converter which can convert decimal to Roman numerals and vice versa.
Meta Description: [ Converts normal numbers to roman digits, and vice versa ]
Rubik's Cube Lecture Notes - Notes on the mathematics of the Rubik's cube.
SimonSingh.net - Home of Simon Singh: author, journalist and TV producer, specialising in science and mathematics. Cryptography is one of his specialties, and his site has a lot of educational and fun content about codes and codebreaking.
Meta Description: [ Welcome to Simon Singh.net. Find out more about The Black Chamber, Crypto CD-ROM, Fermat's Last Theorem, The Code Book, The Science of Secrecy, Channel 4, Tomorrow's World, Proof, Andrew Wiles, Pierre de Fermat, Fermat, Charles Babbage, Alan Turing, Enigm ]
Sir Roger Penrose - A article about him and his interests and contributions to recreational mathematics.
Meta Description: [ The web site to explore the great M.C. Escher artworks. Each image has commentary and a zoom mode. Online tesselation contests, reading material and secure shopping area for the 170 Escher related products, make this the best web site for M. C. Escher surfing. ]
Skytopia - Super Magnet - A colourful world built entirely using mathematical atoms and molecules. Pictures and animations demonstrate structures colliding and interacting. Animated GIF demonstrations.
Meta Description: [ Explore the colorful world built entirely using mathematical atoms and molecules. Pictures and animations demonstrate structures colliding and interacting. ]
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Spirocharts - A windows application that creates mathematically precise spirograph drawings; savable as images.
Meta Description: [ A windows app that creates mathematically precise spirograph drawings; savable as images ]
Spirograph - A java applet for creating Spirograph images.
Stunning Friends with Math Magic - A collection of card tricks, number guessing games, paper and glue magic, and other math exercises.
Table of Numbers Problem - Given a m * n rectangle, place all numbers from 1 to mn that minimizes the sum of the products of rows and columns (both in Spanish and English).
Meta Description: [ Unsolved mathematical problem about numbers in a rectangular grid. Requires Javascript. ]
The Diamond 16 Puzzle - New version of the classic puzzle using row/column/quadrant permutations to display symmetries of graphic designs. Has link to a site on the underlying mathematics (Diamond Theory).
The Eugène Strens Recreational Mathematics Collection - A special collection at the University of Calgary, including the archives of Martin Gardner. There is a searchable online index.
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The Nine Digits Page - Puzzles and problems connected with numbers using the digits 1-9.
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The Snarking of the Hunt - Visitors are invited to analyse the verses to discover mathematical puzzles and riddles. They are invited to offer solutions.
Meta Description: [ This site presents George Kenealy's poem 'The Snarking of the Hunt'.
Visitors are invited to analyse the verses to discover mathematical puzzles and riddles and to
offer solutions. Contributions from readers will be pooled in order to establish what the late
author may have had in mind when wri... ]
Treasure Troves : Book List - Book list including titles, authors, publishers, prices, page count and some have links to Amazon.com.
Wade Edward Philpott - Profile and description of his mathematical games and puzzles.
Meta Description: [ Kadon Enterprises, Inc., profile page of puzzle researcher Wade Philpott, part of Kadon's on-line catalog of original games and puzzles. ]
Wade Edward Philpott Collection - A special collection at the University of Calgary Library.
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Who Can Name the Bigger Number? - An essay by Scott Aaronson on the quest for ever-bigger numbers, from exponentials to Busy Beavers.
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