Today’s puzzle is set by Terence Tao, who may be the world’s most famous mathematician.

Tao, aged 51, has been a global phenomenon since the age of ten, when he became the youngest competitor at the International Maths Olympiad, a record he still holds. For the last three decades he has been a professor at UCLA, where he has been garlanded with prizes, and where one of his colleagues famously said: “Terry is like Mozart: mathematics just flows out of him.”

Tao is a very visible leader of the field, not only because of his scientific contributions and collaborations, but also because he writes the most widely-read blog in research level maths. When Open AI earlier this month stunned the community with the release of hundreds of proofs of long-standing open questions – the “mathpocalypse” – his blog has become one of the most important forums for the community’s response.

This week Tao publishes Six Maths Essentials , his first work aimed at a general audience.…