Dover Recreational Math
5 total works
"In his most critically acclaimed work, a well-known mathematician, magician, and author spins a logical labyrinth of more than 200 increasingly complex and challenging problems - puzzles that delve into some of the deepest paradoxes of logic and set theory. Solutions."The most original, most profound, and most humorous collection of recreational logic and math problems ever written." - Martin Gardner"--
"The Lady or the Tiger?" is a series of problems and paradoxes all compiled chiefly to entertain and related to important concepts of contemporary logic and mathematical theory. The puzzles range from the simplest "old chestnuts" to the most tantalizing complexities. In the first half of the book, a range of imaginary characters - sane and insane vampires, psychiatrists, dreamers, hermits, kings, knights, and knaves - pose questions, giving just enough information to enable the reader to solve problems or increasing difficulty. A fair-minded king, for example, tells his prisoners the few facts necessary for a clever puzzler to earn his freedom (and perhaps a bride) by choosing correctly between the Lady or the Tiger. The last section, "The Mystery of the Monte Carlo", is a mathematical novel. Beginning with the practical problem of finding a combination to open a safe, Inspector Craig, serendipitiously assisted by two friends and their number machines, finds himself in ever deeper mathematical waters, which lead eventually to the very heart of Godel's revolutionary theory of undecidability.
Accompanied as ever by the faithful Watson, Holmes is summoned to investigate why chess games at a number of clubs and stately homes have been mysteriously abandoned. Using his remarkable powers of deduction and retrograde analysis, Holmes reconstructs, move by move, the events that occurred at the scene of the crime - the chessboard. No sooner is the solution arrived at than the game is afoot once more - this time in pursuit of the murderous Moriarty, whose contribution of 10 devilish chess problems can be found at the end of the book.
A range of puzzles dealing with word play and logic, mathematics and philosophy, featuring Alice and the creatures of Wonderland.
