Conference rusure::math

1969.0. "Mathematical detective work" by IOSG::CARLIN (Dick Carlin IOSG, Reading, England) Wed Apr 19 1995 13:22

This should possibly go in a games conference, but I'm confident that the
polymath readership of this conference can come up with something.

This came out of a study of Renaissance paintings that my son is engaged in.
One of the pictures, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, painted by
Barthel Beham, has the title "The Umpire". It depicts a man with chalk in
hand, standing behind a table on which the following has been chalked.

                     2
                  5     4
                     6          o      C83
                        2
                     6          o
                  8     6
                     4
                        8
                     1                                       1529

All the single numbers except the 4 in the 2nd row have been crossed out.
The "o"s are small circles.
The C83 is in fact half hidden by his hand. All you can see is what looks
like the top of a large C, followed by the tops of an 8 and a 3.
The 1529 is almost certainly a date and nothing to do with the rest.

No-one seems to know what the numbers mean, except to surmise that they
constitute some form of tally. Perhaps the whole thing is allegorical and the
numbers are meaningless: there is also an apple (Original Sin?) and glass of
wine (Eucharist?) on the table.

Nevertheless can anyone think of a 16th century game that could be associated
with this set of numbers? Or perhaps it is a way of carrying out some
mathematical calculation. It would be nice to come up with an answer where
previous experts have drawn a blank.

Dick