The Riddler: Fantastic Puzzles from FiveThirtyEight

by Oliver Roeder (editor)

“A modern, smart puzzle book, unlike anything I’ve seen before, whose math and logic challenges will stretch your brain in new ways.”—Will Shortz, New York Times crossword editor and NPR puzzlemaster

The most mind-bending puzzles on the internet appear weekly in Oliver Roeder’s “The Riddler” column. Presented by Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, this first-ever collection features the column’s most popular problems, along with six never-before-published puzzles, all exploring the math implicit in everyday occurences. The simplest require a mere flash of insight, while the toughest involve deep applications of analysis and probability theory. Designed to appeal to a range of skill levels, The Riddler is a must-have for any math or puzzle enthusiast.

Genres: Nonfiction, Mathematics, Reference

162 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 9, 2018

About the author

Oliver Roeder has been a senior writer at FiveThirtyEight and editor of The Riddler, a collection of the site’s math puzzles. He studied artificial intelligence as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and holds a PhD in economics focused on game theory. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, for me, the puzzles ranged from "trivial" to "I don't know where to begin" -- with no in-between. Several puzzles cannot be solved mathematically and require computer simulation, and not knowing which is rather irritating.

[Maurizio Codogno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tanti bei problemi nuovi (almeno per me)

Immagino conosciate il sito Five Thirty-Eight (che ho scoperto essere finito sotto ABC News). Esso ha sempre avuto una sezione di giochi matematici, e questo volume è la prima loro raccolta. Ci sono 49 problemi: ammetto che la sezione più legata all'analisi matematica (e in parte alla teoria della probabilità) è roba tosta, e non parliamo dell'ultima sezione, intitolata "Geometry": ma la sezione iniziale di "logica" merita da sola l'acquisto del libro, anche perché la maggior parte dei problemi mi era ignota. Ottimo acquisto, insomma.