by Alex Bellos
101 Better Than Half a Chance. Edward B Burger, Making Up Your Own Mind, Princeton University Press, 2018.
102 Single White Pebble. Unknown source.
103 The Joy of Socks. Raymond Smullyan, What is the Name of this Book?, Dover Publications, 1978.
104 Loose Change. Half a Century of Pythagoras Magazine, The Mathematical Association of America, 2015.
105 The Sack of Spuds. Half a Century of Pythagoras Magazine, The Mathematical Association of America, 2015.
106 The Bags of Sweets. Peter Winkler, Mathematical Mind-Benders, A. K. Peters/CRC Press, 2007.
107 A Strategy for the Displacement of Improper Thoughts. Lewis Carroll, Pillow Problems, Dover Publications, 1958.
108 Bertrand’s Box Paradox. Joseph Bertrand, Calcul des probabilités, 1889.
109 The Dice Man Diet. Steven E. Landsburg, Can You Outsmart an Economist, Mariner Books, 2018
110 Die! Die! Die! Peter Winkler, Mathematical Puzzles: A Connoisseur’s Collection, A. K. Peters/CRC Press, 2004.
111 The Phoney Flips. Author’s own.
112 Just Four Kids. Futility Closet, 2013, https://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/11/10/brood-war/
113 The Big Family. Author’s own.
114 Problems With Siblings. Michael and Thomas Starbird.
115 The Girl Born in an Even Year. Author’s own.
116 The Twynne Twins. Martin Gardner, Wheels, Life and Other Mathematical Amusements, W. H. Freeman, 1983.
117 A Jab of MMMR. Adapted from NRICH https://nrich.maths.org/11281
118 Lies and Statistics. Adapted from Steven E. Landsburg, Can You Outsmart an Economist?, Mariner Books, 2018.
119 The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. Steven E. Landsburg, Can You Outsmart an Economist?, Mariner Books, 2018.
120 The Fight Club. Frederick Mosteller, Fifty Challenging Problems in Probability, Dover Publications, 1987.
121 Tying the Grass and Tying the Knot. Martin Gardner, Sixth Book of Mathematical Diversions from Scientific American, University of Chicago Press, 1984.
122 The Three Slips of Paper. Martin Gardner, My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles, Dover Publications, 1994.
123 The Three Prisoners. Martin Gardner, The Second Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions, University of Chicago Press, 1961.
124 The Monty Fall Problem. Jason Rosenhouse, The Monty Hall Problem, Oxford University Press, 2009.
125 Russian Roulette. William Poundstone, How Would You move Mount Fuji?, Little Brown, 2003.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe most thanks to the readers of my Guardian puzzle column: https://www.theguardian.com/science/series/alex-bellos-monday-puzzle. I’ve been setting a puzzle every two weeks since May 2015, and thanks to readers’ enthusiasm, suggestions and (helpful!) pedantry, I am constantly learning new, interesting problems, as well as always being kept on my toes.
Friends in the mathematical and puzzle community who have helped me with material include Carlos D’Andrea, Rob Eastaway, Tanya Khovanova, Max Maven, Adrian Paenza, Simon Pampena, Bernardo Recaman, Adam Rubin, Steve Selvin, Chris Smith and Carlos Vinuesa. I’m grateful to Eric Angelini, Dan Finkel, Scott Kim, Lee Sallows, and Tom and Michael Starbird for letting me use problems they created, and to the authors Doug Nufer and Mike Keith for letting me reprint their constrained prose. It is a privilege to be able to use Scott’s puzzle on the cover; for readers interested in ambigrams his website www.scottkim.com has lots of further activities and examples. Thanks to tessellation artist Alain Nicolas for giving me permission to use his artwork. Readers wanting to see more of his amazing images should go to http://en.tessellations-nicolas.com. And thanks to Catriona Shearer for her geometrical puzzles. You can find many more on her Twitter page: her handle is @Cshearer41.
In writing about Georges Perec, I am treading on the toes of my father David, who is Perec’s biographer and translator and an expert on Oulipo. For my research about writing constraints, he recommended the essay Exercises in wile by his Princeton University colleague Joshua Katz, from which I took the anagram that is the title of my chapter on wordplay.
My brilliant editors Fred Baty and Laura Hassan at Guardian Faber have coped fantastically well with having their brains turned inside out by these problems. It has also been a pleasure working with their colleagues Kate Ward in pre-press, Pete Adlington in design, Jack Murphy in production and Josh Smith in publicity.
Ian Fitzgerald has managed the complicated process of putting the book together masterfully. Andri Johannsson drew perfect mathematical drawings and Simon Landrein created marvellous illustrations for the beginning of each chapter. The text is immeasurably better thanks to Ben Sumner’s razor-sharp copy edit, and looks gorgeous thanks to Richard Carr’s design and typesetting.
As always, I have been superbly agented by Rebecca Carter and her colleagues Kirsty Gordon and Ellis Hazelgrove at Janklow & Nesbit.
I’m grateful to the ever-perceptive and insightful Colin Beveridge and Moses Klein for giving the book a mathematical once-over.
Lastly, I’d like to thank Natalie for her support, patience and cakes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alex Bellos has a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy from the University of Oxford. His bestselling, award-winning books include Alex’s Adventures in Numberland, Alex Through the Looking-Glass, Can You Solve My Problems? and Puzzle Ninja have been translated into more than twenty languages. His YouTube videos have been seen by more than twenty million people, and he writes a popular blog for the Guardian.
COPYRIGHT
First published by Guardian Faber in 2019
Guardian Faber is an imprint of Faber & Faber Ltd,
Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street,
London WC1B 3DA
Guardian is a registered trademark of
Guardian News & Media Ltd,
Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU
This ebook edition first published in 2019
All rights reserved
Copyright ©Alex Bellos, 2019
Cover design by Faber
Cover puzzle illustration © Scott Kim
Puzzle illustrations © Andri Johannsson
Chapter cartoons © Simon Landrein
Puzzle illustrations for Problem 99 © Alain Nicolas
The right of Alex Bellos to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–1–783–35192–3