The Godelian Puzzle Book: Puzzles, Paradoxes and Proofs

by Raymond M. Smullyan

These logic puzzles provide entertaining variations on Godel's incompleteness theorems, offering ingenious challenges related to infinity, truth and provability, undecidability, and other concepts. No background in formal logic necessary.

Genres: Puzzles, Nonfiction, Mathematics, Science, Philosophy, Textbooks

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Raymond M. Smullyan was a logician, musician, Zen master, puzzle master, and writer.

Reviews

[Gustavo Chaves · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm rating this book poorly not because it's a bad book but because I didn't like reading it.

In the preface the author says this: "I have written this book so that it should be perfectly comprehensible to any reasonably bright high-school student."

Since (I haven't been able to comprehend it) and (I considered myself a reasonably bright high-school student) it follows that either I ain't or the author haven't done a good job. My frustration derives from the fact that I have Raymond Smullyan in great regard since I read his book "The Tao is Silent". So, what reading this book acomplished to me was to make me doubt my own mathematical prowess.

So, don't take this book lightly. If you really want to follow it through be prepared to go slowly, working with pen and paper along the way. I found it tough.

[Jimi Olivo · Rating 2 out of 5]

So far this seems to focus purely on self-referential logic puzzles (which should be obvious by the title), which means that the reader may want to know her way through Smullyan's imaginary islands of Knights and Knaves first. For me, it's been well over a decade, so I'm finding this to be much more challenging than most of Smullyan's logic puzzle books.

It's also not very well-written, both as an instructional document and as a piece of entertainment. The logic puzzles are solid but are so full of ambiguities that I find myself reaching for the answer key for early problems just so I can understand what missing details to ignore.

So far, this has been extremely frustrating. But mastering this class of puzzles will certainly enrich any puzzle enthusiast's life.

I'm a long-time Smullyan fan. This is the worst of his books I've ever read but has the best class of puzzles I've ever seen. If you're anything like me, you'll want to press on. I can't say I'm enjoying it as much as I should.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

2/3 through the book. Novel way to formulate Godel's incompleteness theorems and related concepts. Many typos which caused great difficulties in understanding some proofs. And a couple of abuses of terms and definitions. Otherwise a good read! I will come back to the comment after finishing it.

[RAJESH PARAMESWARAN]

This is a tough one, but enjoyed taking a crack at it.

[Aryan Prasad · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think the book is much over ambitious, trying to let the reader get a "feel" for Gödel's incompleteness theorems in the first part and formally proving it in the second. The author's humour is bit too much forced and the floral proofs are not developed enough due to paucity of space. I think it would have been better if the book stuck to being a Popular science book while directing the more ambitious readers elsewhere.

[Maurizio Codogno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non so quanto i problemi aiutino un libro così tecnico

Comincio subito a mettere le mani avanti. Nonostante le apparenze, questo testo è molto tecnico, tanto che parte dai teoremi di indeterminatezza di Gödel e prosegue con le successive semplificazioni ed estensioni. Certo, è nello stile di Smullyan e quindi la trattazione è sotto forma di problemini (e problemoni...) da risolvere: confesso che dopo un po' ho lasciato perdere i problemi e mi sono limitato a guardare la parte con le soluzioni. Insomma, perfetto per gli amanti della logica a livello universitario, ma non so a chi lo consiglierei.

[Federico Kereki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smullyan's books are always good -- though I'll admit there's a bit of overlap with some previous books.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Smullyan books, but I felt this one was a little harder to read than some of his others.