Westchester Campers to Compete in KenKen Contest Friday

The following release is from the White Plains Youth Bureau:

Campers from the White Plains Youth Bureau’s Bits and Pieces Summer Camp will be competing on Friday, Aug. 1 in the KenKen, a challenging pencil-and-paper puzzle that will help sharpen their math skills.

The event, cosponsored by the Westchester County Youth Bureau for the second year in a row, will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the camp, located at the Church Street School, 295 Church St., White Plains. About 150 campers will participate.

“The KenKen contest is a great way to work on math skills in a fun, challenging way,” said County Executive Robert P. Astorino. “This contest is another way we continue to support and promote STEM education in Westchester.”

STEM – or science, technology, engineering and math – has been an ongoing focus for Astorino, who says it is imperative that Westchester help encourage the skills needed in today’s high-tech workforce.

Iris Pagan, executive director of the Westchester Youth Bureau, added: “The Japanese words mean ‘I can think, I can think,’ which is precisely our message to these campers. The skills they learn have the potential to help them in their everyday lives, far beyond just math classes.”

Like Sudoku, KenKen is a puzzle that originated in Japan and has attracted millions of enthusiasts. KenKen puzzles are carried daily in the New York Times and hundreds of other newspapers.

The idea to have a contest grew out of a conversation originally between Pagan and Jing Xie, a member of the county youth board who is also an IBM employee. This year, the event was coordinated by his colleague Willie Blassingame under the sponsorship of Tara Radford, CFO of IBM Security Systems, and Brad Short, CFO of IBM Business Analytics. Over 30 IBMers plan to join the campers in their day of KenKen.

“As IBMers, we are especially eager to promote the roles of math and critical thinking at a young age,” Blassingame said. “The opportunity to do that in a fun way in our own community makes it that much more special. After the success of last year’s event, we were delighted to continue with Ken Ken and the Youth Bureau.”

KenKen has a local office in Pleasantville, which will be assisting with the camp competition.

Robert Fuhrer, founder of the local company, said: “Over 30,000 teachers nationwide have already discovered that KenKen, an easy-to-learn and unbelievably fun math and logic puzzle, can help even the most math-averse students develop not only math skills, but vastly improve their logic and critical thinking skills while instilling a sense of self-confidence and developing perseverance. Students and adults alike can sharpen their math skills with KenKen’s mobile apps, and on its website www.kenken.com.”