This is the first in what I hope will be a semi-regular series of recreational puzzles where SQL can be used to find the answer. I set these puzzles on occasional Fridays in my workplace, and as I now have quite an archive I thought I should start sharing them with a wider audience.

I came up with the idea for this puzzle involving Magic Squares by accident while trying to do something different – and getting it wrong! For a moment I thought I’d had an original idea but then it was “Hang on – I’m sure I must have seen this before.”

A bit of googling and that thought was proved right – I’m just not that original. In fact the first documented instance of these appears to be the Chinese legend of Lo Shu – possibly dating back as far as 650BC. I was only beaten by the best part of three millennia…

You may have seen these before at some point – but hopefully long enough ago that you don’t know all the answers! Possibly like me they ring a bell for you but you can’t remember exactly where from.

A Magic Square is a square grid e.g. 1×1, 2×2, 3×4, 4×4…. or n x n, where numbers are placed in each square in the grid such that if you add up the numbers in each column, row, or diagonally they all add up to the same total.

Usually you use consecutive numbers starting from 1 (placing each number just once), so in the 2 x 2 grid you would place the numbers 1 to 4, in the 3 x 3 the numbers 1 to 9 – and so on.

Here’s the 1 x1 grid:

I thought I’d be generous and give you that one for free

So my first question is can you find a solution (with the numbers 1 to 4) to the 2 x 2 grid:

Having explored that possibility (not for too long I hope!) the meat of this puzzle is to find solutions to the 3 x 3 grid using the numbers 1 to 9:

In fact, using SQL, can you not just find one solution, but all the possible solutions? How many are there?

Share your attempts and answers in the comments.

Have fun