Visual Blog
About Oscar
Oscar Seurat* is a mathematician and author exploring the creative domain at the intersection of science, art, and magic. He has written the first "Euler thriller", a novel featuring an adventurous encounter of a New York high schooler with an 18th century genius Leonhard Euler. In the non-fiction genre Seurat has authored a book of pictorial puzzles, "Sudoku Stories", where the puzzles' numerical shapes lead the reader to popular science articles. He has also created a smart phone game, "Torus Boards", a Flatland version of the game's legendary cubic predecessor.
Oscar has worked for more than a decade at prominent Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Royal Bank of Canada, and Franklin Templeton. He has taught mathematics and computer science at several major schools including Fordham University, Northeastern University, and Stevens Institute of Technology.
Always fascinated with
bird’s eye views, Oscar started his aviation
adventure in Teterboro, NJ where
he obtained a private pilot license in 2004. He has flown extensively in the northeastern United States logging 900 landings and close
to 400 hours of flight. This flight time does not include the very
short flights he performed in college as a high jumper where he
reached the personal best of 6 ft and 9.1 in (206cm).
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 The Blind Bidder's Eye, Oscar's second book, appeared in August 2015. It is a magical realism thriller involving a father and his teenage son whose lives spiral into chaos when the boy stumbles across a curious item belonging to an 18th century genius. The novel sends the reader on an exciting, bumpy path through the son’s humorous tribulations at his Manhattan high school, a singular Wall Street business of blind bidding, and the mind of Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), a mathematician historically known to have lost an eye due to mental exertion. Click on the image for a preview. ♦
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 In December of 2013, Oscar published a recreational mathematics book, Sudoku Stories: History, Art and Science in 101 Designer Puzzles. The novelty of the book, written with a co-author Olivier Nicolas, rests upon the contained puzzles' pictorially representing objects rather than being just tables of randomly placed numbers. The 101 designs are accompanied by articles on the related and timely topics. The book comes in two formats: an 8.5'' x 11'' album, and a "pocket" volume 5'' x 8'' in size. Click on the image for a high quality preview. ♦
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* — pseudonym
Kotei Kato
Kotei Kato is a Sudoku-style game that is played in three dimensions. Technically, it is based on the concept of Latin cubes, 3-dimensional analogs of Latin squares studied by Euler. "Kotei Kato" are the first syllables of a Japanese expression "not bound by constraints" (in this case of two-dimensional space).
Initially, a cube of size N is given with a certain number of prefilled entries. One is to fill the remaining cells in such a way so that every row, every column, and every "near-far tunnel" contain distinct numbers 1 through N.
In the illustrations below N = 4. The second picture contains the solution to the puzzle given in the first. Click on any of the images to play.
In the provided implementation a special highlighting scheme is employed to avoid numbers' blocking one another and by
that making the cube difficult to work with.
The scheme is based on the following four principles:
♠ numbers that are not of the player's "immediate interest" are dimmed and semi-transparent allowing the player to focus on
those that he is currently working with
♠ only the numbers that reside in some slice containing the elevator are considered of the player's
immediate interest and are fully highlighted
♠ there are always three slices that contain the elevator, however only one of them is highlighted; it
is that slice among the three that is most parallel to the plane of the screen
♠ by rotating the cube and moving the elevator the player can highlight any slice he wishes
♣
Puzzle Book
101
Magical Picture Puzzles and Stories
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Rather
than being just a table of randomly placed
numbers, each puzzle in this book depicts an animal, a symbol or an
object. A captivating
article on the object brings it to life and gives the puzzle its own
special personality. The puzzles are arranged into 14 topical chapters
which start with puzzles on "Animals", "Countries"
and "Environment" and end with those on "Money",
"Space" and "Warfare".
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| Pocket Edition |  |
Album Edition | ||||
| Size: | 5'' x 8'' | Size: | 8.5'' x 11'' | |||
| Cover: | Full Color | Cover: | Full Color | |||
| Interior: | B&W | Interior: | Full Color | |||
| Publisher: | Quadrature Books | Publisher: | Quadrature Books | |||
| ISBN-13: | 978-0991323524 | ISBN-13: | 978-0991323517 | |||
| ISBN-10: | 0991323521 | ISBN-10: | 0991323513 | |||
| LOOK INSIDE! | LOOK INSIDE! | |||||
| Where to Buy | Where to Buy | |||||
| @ Amazon.com |
B&W: @ Amazon.com |
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| @Barnes&Noble |
Full Color: Currently Unavailable |
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Euler Thriller
"'The Blind Bidder's Eye' is a captivating and thought-provoking thriller filled with risks and possibilities. It is an adventure worth diving into."
"An inventive puzzle of a novel by a writer of singular vision."
†
The
Blind Bidder's Eye
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In this magical realism thriller involving a father and his teenage son,
the couple's lives spiral into chaos when the boy stumbles across a
curious item belonging to an 18th century genius, Leonhard
Euler. Unexpectedly, the resulting flashes of brilliance
experienced by the boy bring few benefits in school and lead instead to
a series of mishaps including a disaster at his father's investment
firm. In spite of the misfortunes, the son's flares of ingenuity make the father - a Wall Street executive and a man impressed only by the strength of one’s mind - change his perception of the boy as a weakling and set the two's troubled relationship on a healing course. This change may be coming too late, however; the boy is missing and quite possibly in harm's way ... The novel sends the reader on an exciting, bumpy path through the son's humorous tribulations at his Manhattan high school, a singular Wall Street business of blind bidding, and the mind of Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), a mathematician historically known to have lost an eye due to mental exertion. Click on the image for a preview. † |
Torus Board Games
orus Boards is a collection of games based on flat depictions of
a torus with shiftable multi-colored bands on its surface. The bands are assumed to move in three directions: along the smaller radius, the larger radius, and spirally at an angle of 45 degrees to either of the radii. On the square these motions correspond to three shifts which wrap around the columns, rows, and diagonals. After the square (or torus) has been scrambled, your task is to bring it back to its original state by any combination of the three shifts.
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