On this free online course, we’ll look at three types of maths puzzle, exploring their history, meeting the puzzlists who created them, and studying and practising problem-solving techniques.

Each week, we’ll tackle a different type of encrypted maths puzzle, including:

• Cryptarithms: maths puzzles where the digits have been replaced by letters. You’ll need to practice your verbal arithmetic and use addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to solve them.

• Symbologies: maths puzzles where numbers are represented by symbols. We’ll explore everything from ancient Egyptian, Roman and Greek numerals to the language of computers to ISBN and bar codes.

• Mathematical operator puzzles: maths puzzles where the numbers are given, but the mathematical operator is missing. For example, what operation does the asterisk stand for in *1320=6?

By the end of the course, you’ll have upgraded your problem-solving skills, gained knowledge and insight into the history, art and methodology of deciphering encrypted puzzles, and exercised your brain with fun challenges.

The course is designed for anyone who enjoys popular science, recreational maths and solving maths puzzles and crosswords. There are no particular requirements.