MATH = SORCERY

I used to absolutely despise high school algebra — right up until very recently. Trigonometry came closer to the feeling I’m about to describe, so I tolerated it more. But overall, high school math felt like it was for the birds.

I wasn’t terrible at it. I did okay. Still, something always felt deeply off.

Twenty years later, I can finally put words to why:

Math is really sorcery.

Algebra is the threshold into that advanced sorcery.

My first suspicion that math was far more mysterious than anyone admitted came the day my teacher introduced the Times Table grid.

She told us we could “cheat code” all day long: simply line up the numbers, find where the two numbers meet on the grid, and there — instantly — is your answer.

That moment stuck with me. Here was this beautiful, almost magical grid where multiplication wasn’t something you had to grind out. It was already there, waiting like a hidden pattern in the universe. You just had to know where to look.

That grid felt like peeking behind the curtain of reality itself.

From then on, I sensed that math wasn’t really about memorizing rules or passing tests. It was about discovering secret codes, patterns, and rhythms that govern everything — numbers dancing together in ways that feel almost alive.

Algebra, with its letters standing in for unknown quantities and its sudden revelations when x finally reveals itself, was when the sorcery started getting serious.

Now, years later, I’ve created BANANANUMBERS to bring that same living magic back into learning — in a way that feels playful, engaging, and deeply human.

In BANANANUMBERS we use Bananagrams tiles. Each letter A–Z has a value from 1 to 26. Students build small word grids (like tiny crosswords), calculate the value of each word, and then turn those words into living math problems: add them, subtract them (hello negative numbers), multiply, or divide them. Shared letters get counted twice. The game naturally brings in decimals, fractions, repeating patterns, and that sense of infinity.

What used to feel dry and mechanical now feels like sorcery again — because language and numbers are dancing together on the table, “out of order,” full of surprise and discovery.

The times table grid first showed me the hidden magic.

BANANANUMBERS lets children (and adults) step through the threshold and play with it.

Math is sorcery.

And when we teach it that way — with wonder instead of worksheets — the mind stays awake, the heart stays open, and real learning happens.

BANANANUMBERS:

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