The magic square with a hole

Question

Alice loves magic squares. She has a 4x4 square, where she can put a number in each cell. But alas! Some evil person has poked a hole in her square. Alice is really really sad because she can't make a magic square anymore. Won't you cheer poor Alice up?

You are given a 4x4 square with 1 of its cells removed. Put the numbers 1 to 15 in it so that each row, column and diagonal sum to the same.

Roland · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-15T23:00:41.703

13

Here are a few from this site. Any magic square with integers 0-15 will work, considering the 0 as a hole. I've chosen four with the 0 in the inner four cells just to be sure it meets your criteria. The rows, columns, and diagonals of each add up to 30.

edited Sep 15 '15 at 23:00

answered Sep 15 '15 at 22:54

Roland

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The square can be constructed by making a normal 4x4 1-16 square and subtracting 1 from each cell. – jingyu9575 Sep 16 '15 at 03:53
Actually it can be done even if the hole (ie. 0) is in a corner or a side as well. – Rohcana Sep 16 '15 at 05:02
Building on @jingyu9575 his suggestion, you can extend the idea behind it up to (and maybe beyond) a 16x16 (http://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/6250/the-quite-unusual-square/6384#6384) , just reduce each of the numbers by one. – Tim Couwelier Sep 16 '15 at 08:40

The magic square with a hole

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