Summary
If you enjoy thinking, this book is definitely for you! Have a quick browse through the pages. There are brain twisters for all types of mind: logic problems, word conundrums, algebraic teasers, visio-spatial puzzles, lateral mind benders – in fact, no mind is left untwisted! You can forget about enrolling for a Ph.D. in Complex Number Theory to attempt this book. No puzzle requires a greater knowledge of mathematics than high school algebra and most don't even need that. The puzzles are divided into two levels of difficulty: Popular Puzzles which yield their secrets with a modest degree of effort, and Advanced Puzzles which demand much greater insight and concentration. The latter are intended for those puzzle geniuses amongst you who find the Popular Puzzles too easy. If you manage to solve at least half of the Advanced Puzzles then award yourself the title Professor of Pleasurable Puzzles!
Around half of the puzzles have been published before, mainly as Brain Twisters in the Saturday edition of The Daily Telegraph, while many are entirely new. All the puzzles are original in conception although puzzle enthusiasts will recognize Wire Wizards and In The Same Boat as developments of existing problems.
Some puzzles appear for special reasons. Although Find The Burglar follows a well-worked format, it was one of the first puzzles I ever composed, written when I was just 15 years old. A Tall Story appears as my first published mathematical puzzle from March 1987, while Save The City and Sum Secret are examples from the class of Digital Deletion Sums that I discovered in June 1987.
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- Puzzles for Pleasure , pp. ix - xPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994