Martin Gardner. Aha! New York: Scientific American. 1978.
For 25 years, Gardner wrote “Mathematical Games and Recreations,” a monthly column for Scientific American magazine. These columns have inspired hundreds of thousands to delve into his many puzzle books—all of them outstanding. This one is especially ingenious since it revolves around the “Aha Effect” produced by puzzles of all kinds.
Martin Gardner. Gotcha: Paradoxes to Puzzle and Delight! San Francisco: Freeman, 1982.
This is a companion volume to the previous one. In it, Gardner takes us through the many pitfalls that puzzles lay for us.
Sam Loyd. Mathematical Puzzles of Sam Loyd. Ed. by Martin Gardner. New York: Dover, 1959.
Compiled by another great puzzlist, Martin Gardner, this collection by Sam Loyd, one of the leading puzzlists of modern history, contains some of the most challenging puzzles for mathematicians and general public alike. Many are now classic in the field.
Sam Loyd. Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles, Tricks, and Conundrums with Answers. New York: Dover. Originally 1914.
This book was compiled by Sam Loyd’s son after his father’s death. Perhaps the most complete volume of all of his puzzles, it is considered the most magnificent and stimulating collection of puzzles ever assembled.
Raymond M. Smullyan. What Is the Name of This Book? The Riddle of Dracula and Other Logical Puzzles. New York: Dover, 2011.
Raymond Smullyan (1919–2017) was a mathematician, logician, magician, and creator of extraordinary puzzles. This is one of the most brilliant books in logic puzzles. These puzzles delve into Gödel’s undecidability theorem—a celebrated and important one for the foundations of mathematics—as well as some of the deepest paradoxes of logic and set theory.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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MARCEL DANESI teaches a course on the history of puzzles and their meaning to human life at Victoria College of the University of Toronto. He has been a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto since 1974. Danesi has written puzzles for Reader’s Digest, the Toronto Star, and Prevention Magazine and maintains a puzzle blog for Psychology Today in which he discusses the significance of different types of puzzles. He has also published several best-selling puzzle books, such as The Total Brain Workout and The Complete Brain Workout.
The 125 Best Brain Teasers of All Time Page 11