Perilous Problems for Puzzle Lovers: Math, Logic & Word Puzzles to Challenge Your Brain (Alex Bellos Puzzle Books)


Book Description

Put your wits—and survival instincts—to the test! Publisher’s Note: Perilous Problems for Puzzle Lovers was previously published in the UK under the title So You Think You’ve Got Problems? In Perilous Problems for Puzzle Lovers, Alex Bellos collects 125 of the world’s greatest stumpers—many dangerous to your person, and all dangerous to your pride. Brace yourself to wrestle with wordplay, grapple with geometry, and scramble for survival. For example . . . Ten lions and a sheep are in a pen. Any lion who eats the sheep will fall asleep. A sleeping lion will be eaten by another lion, who falls asleep in turn. If the lions are all perfect logicians, what happens? Bellos pairs his fiendish brainteasers with fascinating history, so you’ll meet Alcuin, Sam Loyd, and other puzzle masters of yore—in between deranged despots and wily jailers with an unaccountable taste for riddles. Will you make it out alive? And what about the sheep?




Perilous Problems for Puzzle Lovers


Book Description

Put your wits—and survival instincts—to the test! Publisher’s Note: Perilous Problems for Puzzle Lovers was previously published in the UK under the title So You Think You’ve Got Problems? In Perilous Problems for Puzzle Lovers, Alex Bellos collects 125 of the world’s greatest stumpers—many dangerous to your person, and all dangerous to your pride. Brace yourself to wrestle with wordplay, grapple with geometry, and scramble for survival. For example . . . Ten lions and a sheep are in a pen. Any lion who eats the sheep will fall asleep. A sleeping lion will be eaten by another lion, who falls asleep in turn. If the lions are all perfect logicians, what happens? Bellos pairs his fiendish brainteasers with fascinating history, so you’ll meet Alcuin, Sam Loyd, and other puzzle masters of yore—in between deranged despots and wily jailers with an unaccountable taste for riddles. Will you make it out alive? And what about the sheep?




Can You Solve My Problems?


Book Description

A high-class puzzle book from the bestselling author of Alex's Adventures in Numberland; organised from easy-peasy to ninja level - with stories of puzzle mysteries, histories and scandals along the way this book will make your hippocampus happy.




Is That a Fish in Your Ear?


Book Description

A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year People speak different languages, and always have. The Ancient Greeks took no notice of anything unless it was said in Greek; the Romans made everyone speak Latin; and in India, people learned their neighbors' languages—as did many ordinary Europeans in times past (Christopher Columbus knew Italian, Portuguese, and Castilian Spanish as well as the classical languages). But today, we all use translation to cope with the diversity of languages. Without translation there would be no world news, not much of a reading list in any subject at college, no repair manuals for cars or planes; we wouldn't even be able to put together flat-pack furniture. Is That a Fish in Your Ear? ranges across the whole of human experience, from foreign films to philosophy, to show why translation is at the heart of what we do and who we are. Among many other things, David Bellos asks: What's the difference between translating unprepared natural speech and translating Madame Bovary? How do you translate a joke? What's the difference between a native tongue and a learned one? Can you translate between any pair of languages, or only between some? What really goes on when world leaders speak at the UN? Can machines ever replace human translators, and if not, why? But the biggest question Bellos asks is this: How do we ever really know that we've understood what anybody else says—in our own language or in another? Surprising, witty, and written with great joie de vivre, this book is all about how we comprehend other people and shows us how, ultimately, translation is another name for the human condition.




The Original Area Mazes


Book Description

Perfect for sudoku fans—the rules for these 100 logic puzzles are simple, and the math is easy. But the puzzles get harder and harder! Once you match wits with area mazes, you’ll be hooked! Your quest is to navigate a network of rectangles to find a missing value. Just Remember: Area = length × width Use spatial reasoning to find helpful relationships Whole numbers are all you need. You can always get the answer without using fractions! Originally invented for gifted students, area mazes (menseki meiro), have taken all of Japan by storm. Are you a sudoku fanatic? Do you play brain games to stay sharp? Did you love geometry . . . or would you like to finally show it who’s boss? Feed your brain some area mazes—they could be just what you’re craving!




The Language Lover's Puzzle Book: A World Tour of Languages and Alphabets in 100 Amazing Puzzles (Alex Bellos Puzzle Books)


Book Description

100 wonder-filled word puzzles that thrill and tantalize with the beauty, magic, and weirdness of world language Whether you’re a crossword solver, cryptogram fan, Scrabble addict, or Sudoku savant, The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book is guaranteed to tease your brain and twist your tongue. Puzzle master Alex Bellos begins in Japan, where we can observe some curious counting: boru niko = two balls tsuna nihon = two ropes uma nito = two horses kami nimai = two sheets of paper ashi gohon = five legs ringo goko = five apples sara gomai = five plates kaba goto = five hippos Now, how do the Japanese say “nine cucumbers”?* a) kyuri kyuhon b) kyuri kyuko c) kyuri kyuhiki d) kyuri kyuto Bellos finds the intrigue—and the human element—in a dizzying array of ancient, modern, and even invented tongues, from hieroglyphs to Blissymbolics, Danish to Dothraki. Filled with unusual alphabets, fascinating characters, and intriguing local customs for time-telling, naming children, and more, this is a bravura book of brainteasers and beyond—it’s a globe-trotting, time-traveling celebration of language. *The word endings depend on shape: Flat things end in -mai and spherical things end in -ko. Cucumbers are long things (like ropes and legs), so they end in -hon. The answer is (a)!




Visions of the Universe


Book Description

Peek “behind the scenes” of the universe—and see math in brilliant color! For curious minds throughout history, math was truly an art. In Visions of the Universe, you can pick up right where Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal, and other luminaries left off—by coloring 58 exquisite patterns inspired by great discoveries in math: Intricate geometric designs like those that grace the mosques of Mecca Felix Klein’s astounding diagram—drawn in 1897—of light reflecting between five mirrored spheres A mind-bending puzzle so beautiful it once hung outside a Japanese temple, and more! Plus, in the Creating chapter, you’ll help complete 10 additional images by following simple steps that give spectacular results. No math knowledge is required: Anyone can be an artist in Numberland!




So You Think You've Got Problems?


Book Description

Thought you had it bad? In this book, you will be: Imprisoned by a sadistic logician. Challenged to raise dogs from the dead. Trapped on a burning island. And much more besides . . . Everything is at stake in this compendium of more than 150 ingenious puzzles, selected to reveal the wonderful diversity of brainteasers that have confounded and intrigued solvers for the last thousand years. You'll need to pit your wits against probability problems, wrestle with wordplay, grapple with geometry and scrabble for survival. Along the way you will discover stories of whip-smart thinkers, eccentric novelists and a poodle with allegedly supernatural powers. You will absorb fascinating and important mathematical ideas. Some solutions will rely on ingenuity, some will challenge you to spot hidden patterns, others call for extreme rationality. All will surprise, entertain and stretch your brain. Will you make it out with your puzzling pride intact?




Patterns of the Universe


Book Description

"A coloring book that reveals math's hidden beauty and contemplative power as never before with 78 coloring designs and games that explore symmetry, fractals, tessellations, randomness, and more."--




Genius at Play


Book Description

A multifaceted biography of a brilliant mathematician and iconoclast A mathematician unlike any other, John Horton Conway (1937–2020) possessed a rock star’s charisma, a polymath’s promiscuous curiosity, and a sly sense of humor. Conway found fame as a barefoot professor at Cambridge, where he discovered the Conway groups in mathematical symmetry and the aptly named surreal numbers. He also invented the cult classic Game of Life, a cellular automaton that demonstrates how simplicity generates complexity—and provides an analogy for mathematics and the entire universe. Moving to Princeton in 1987, Conway used ropes, dice, pennies, coat hangers, and the occasional Slinky to illustrate his winning imagination and share his nerdish delights. Genius at Play tells the story of this ambassador-at-large for the beauties and joys of mathematics, lays bare Conway’s personal and professional idiosyncrasies, and offers an intimate look into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s most endearing and original intellectuals.