{"id":"899f2b26-4fea-4ff5-9190-8804a077e90c","url":"https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mathematicians-discover-the-worst-way-to-hang-a-painting/","domain":"scientificamerican.com","outlet":{"name":"Scientific American","country":"US","cred":4,"lean":0,"curated":true},"title":"Mathematicians discover the worst way to hang a painting","plainHeadline":"Mathematicians solve a riddle about adversarial painting hangs.","rewrite":{"model":null,"at":null},"summary":["The 1997 riddle asks if removing any one nail keeps the painting mounted.","By 2012, proofs showed solutions exist for any k-out-of-n nail scenario.","The 2-out-of-4 problem was minimized from 80 to 16 wraps.","Verhoeff and Heuseveldt used a computer program to verify minimal solutions.","The work connects to group theory, knot theory, and Boolean functions."],"topics":[],"lang":"eng","publishedAt":"2026-09-05T11:00:00.000Z","ingestedAt":"2026-09-05T12:08:50.833Z","story":null}