Logic puzzles were first introduced to the public by Lewis Carroll in the late nineteenth century and have been popular ever since. Games like Sudoku and Mastermind are fun and engrossing recreational activities, but they also share deep foundations in mathematical logic and are worthy of serious intellectual inquiry. Games for Your Mind explores the history and future of logic puzzles while enabling you to test your skill against a variety of puzzles yourself.
Featuring a wealth of sample puzzles ranging from simple to extremely challenging, this book brings together many of the most ingenious puzzles ever devised, including the “Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever,” metapuzzles, paradoxes, and the logic puzzles in detective stories.
About the author:
Jason Rosenhouse is professor of mathematics at James Madison University. He is the author of “The Monty Hall Problem: The Remarkable Story of Math’s Most Contentious Brain Teaser” and “Among the Creationists: Dispatches from the Anti-Evolutionist Front Line.” He is the co-author (with Laura Taalman) of “Taking Sudoku Seriously: The Math behind the World’s Most Popular Pencil Puzzle” and the co-editor (with Jennifer Beineke) of “The Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects” (Vols. 1–3).
This event was recorded on November 12, 2020.