Einstein's puzzle universe

by Tim Dedopulos

Step into the mind of the greatest physicist of all time! Try to think like Einstein as you come to grips with 120 enigmas, quizzes, and tests of logic based on his greatest work: the theory of relativity, E=mc2, Brownian Motion, zero-point gravity, and many other groundbreaking ideas, all woven into some of the best puzzles ever. With so many incredible discoveries to draw on, plus a selection of Einstein’s most illuminating quotes and over 200 illustrations, this lavishly produced book will open the door to a range of stunning scientific concepts. As the great man once said: “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else”—a challenge that all puzzle enthusiasts will find irresistible.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 9, 2015

About the author

Tim Dedopulos, a British writer, editor, publisher and game designer with nearly 100 works to his name in areas ranging from horror and sff, through music and art, to games, puzzles and jokes.

Tim lives in Spain with his wife and the ghost of his murdered bromeliad, grimly acclimatising to his new-found and unwelcome mid-40s. A shameless INFJ, he usually tries to avoid thinking in the third person.

Reviews

[Juraj Spilda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an unsolicited Christmas present. The puzzles have nothing much to do with Einstein himself (beyond the coded message puzzles revealing quotes from him) and the book is plastered with a repeating low number of stock images of the man. Two types of puzzles keep repeating incessantly (descrambling coded messages - with very arbitrary ciphers - and doing logical deductions from a set of statements), many of the remaining puzzles are either not really 'puzzles' (e.g. why do you become warm if you put on a coat, but a bottle doesn't if you put a coat on it too), and many others are restatements of very standard well-known problems (e.g. prisoner's dilemma, Zeno's paradoxes). Questions that sounds like they should result in very exact answers (and mathematicians/physicists would expect to calculate exactly via formulas) are provided only very vague hand-waving answers in the back (this might be a consequence of the author not being a mathematician himself). Some answers are downright wrong (or something got lost in translation, as I was reading a translated edition) e.g. explaining the problem in logic with Zeno's dichotomy paradox. Even if this is intended for a different demographic (pre-teens? teens?), this book is poorly constructed. The redeeming feature (and why I'm giving 2 stars instead of 1) is that very occasionally, some of the 'puzzles' managed to teach me something or bring a variant of a classic problem to my attention that I didn't know about (Bertrand's box, Berry's paradox - though even then, I was better off reading the wikipedia pages about these problems than reading the explanation in the book).

[Ivica · Rating 1 out of 5]

Slovenske vydanie knizky velmi kazi praca prekladatela + editora.
Nekonzistentny preklad prikladov vs riesenia a viacere chyby, ktore robia zahady a rebusy neriesitelne.

[Matúš · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zbierka väčšinou opakujúcich sa úloh, striedané faktami, ktoré som väčšinou poznal. Pre stredoškoláka, by to mohlo byť zaujímavé.