So You Think You've Got Problems?: Surprising and rewarding puzzles to sharpen your mind

by Alex Bellos

Thought you had it bad? In this book, you will be:

Imprisoned by a sadistic logician.
Challenged to raise dogs from the dead.
Trapped on a burning island.
And much more besides . . .

Everything is at stake in this compendium of more than 150 ingenious puzzles, selected to reveal the wonderful diversity of brainteasers that have confounded and intrigued solvers for the last thousand years. You'll need to pit your wits against probability problems, wrestle with wordplay, grapple with geometry and scrabble for survival.

Along the way you will discover stories of whip-smart thinkers, eccentric novelists and a poodle with allegedly supernatural powers. You will absorb fascinating and important mathematical ideas. Some solutions will rely on ingenuity, some will challenge you to spot hidden patterns, others call for extreme rationality. All will surprise, entertain and stretch your brain.

Will you make it out with your puzzling pride intact?

Genres: Nonfiction, Puzzles, Mathematics, Science

ebook

Published November 5, 2019

About the author

"I was born in Oxford and grew up in Edinburgh and Southampton. After studying mathematics and philosophy at university I joined the Evening Argus in Brighton as a trainee reporter. I joined the Guardian in 1994 as a reporter and in 1998 moved to Rio de Janeiro, where I spent five years as the paper’s South America correspondent. Since 2003 I have lived in London, as a freelance writer and broadcaster.

[...]

In 2003 I presented a five-part series on Brazil for the BBC, called Inside Out Brazil. My short films about the Amazon have been broadcast on the BBC, More 4 and Al Jazeera International."

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strictly speaking, I haven't "finished" this book because I have not attempted all the puzzles therein; but it doesn't stop me from gaining enjoyment and appreciation for it.

This is a good example of the sort of highbrow puzzle books that are back in fashion (alongside others such as the GCHQ puzzle books, they are marketed as intellectual and challenging). Alex Bellos has curated an impressive range of puzzles from wide-ranging sources. The puzzles range from logical, to visual, to word-based, to mathematical. The bibliography at the end listing sources for individual puzzles is a very nice touch. The puzzles are hard but the explanations are clear. Also, there are entertaining snippets of commentary amongst the puzzles, that give you interesting information about various mathematicians, history and academic theories, that makes this book good to read as well as good to use.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always good to have a puzzle book with smart summaries and introductions - plenty of ones I hadn't seen before (along with some old favourites and variants thereon). Enjoyable!

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like puzzles of all sorts and Bellos seems to have these sorts of books off to a T. This is the third of his that is have read, though that probably is the wrong word for this type of book. The puzzles in here are pitched about right too, not too easy, but you don’t need a handful of PhD’s to be able to even understand the questions. It has a good selection of classic conundrums, infuriating brainteasers and baffling geometry puzzles that you can dip into as often or as little as you want. They often involve a linguistic or logical sleight of hand that makes you think of something entirely different before you realise that you have been sent down the wrong path to the solution.

I was quite pleased that I could get some (not many, mind you) of them straight away, and some took a little time to mull over. There were other puzzles that eluded me until I looked at the answers that are thankfully provided at the end of the book. Mathematically they are not hard, rather they are fiendishly difficult logical and sometimes illogical puzzles designed to stretch and exercise your brains. Good companion volumes to The Puzzle Ninja and Can You Solve my Problems?

[Mahdi Dolati · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an amusing and diverse set of puzzles. The difficulty of puzzles is good, not very easy, and not overly complicated. The statement of puzzles is clear. I particularly liked bits of historical and contextual information about puzzles their designers. Overall, I enjoyed reading the book.

[Penguin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pleasant collection of mathematics and logic puzzles. A good chunk of them was centered around pattern recognition and creating sequences around those patterns which is easy to get the hang of once you've seen them enough. There are 125 puzzles (alongside a good few mini side puzzles) and they are all sorted into five different sections which made them all easier to digest. This also isn't a pure book of puzzles, instead, the book takes little breaks in between each one to give little hints or background information (which can be a hint in its own right as well); this really helps the pacing and makes reading this more of an experience.

My favorite section in this book was the one on probability problems. The Monty Hall problem is one of my favorite mathematics riddles, and understanding the core of that helped me grasp the vast majority of the puzzles in this section and it made the overall experience even more enjoyable. The middle of this section also did a great job building up the 'Tuesday-born son' problem and ensuring that I'd be able to eventually solve it on my own at the right time (that one is also my favorite puzzle in the book, and one I'll definitely be pulling out to impress/annoy people in the future).

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alex Bellos’ 7th mathematical book pulls together 125 puzzles split into 5 different categories: animal problems, survival problems, geometry problems, word problems and probability problems. As you might expect, the puzzles range from the relatively straightforward, some of which you may be able to solve in a minute or less, to the fiendishly difficult, some of which require significant persistence or a bolt of inspiration to solve.

If puzzles are your thing then there’s probably something here for you. Alex’s also provides a nice segue between many of the brainteasers, giving just the right amount of additional information to satisfy the curious.

I found the five sections a little uneven, with the geometry problems being tough and the probability problems straightforward, however that may just be how my brain is wired, alongside the fact that I didn’t have the patience to sit and spend too long with many of the puzzles. Overall, however, this is a decent collection and there’s more than likely some answers that will really surprise you.

[Alley W. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perilous Problems for Puzzle lovers is full of many brain teasing puzzles. The obvious answer is not always the right answer. It helps the brain look for patterns, sharpens reasoning skills and exercises your brain. I love how the author gives history and background about certain puzzles and how they have been shaped by mathematical history.

[Linda George · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great compilation of thought-provoking puzzles! For kids or adults, these will keep you busy and thinking for many an hour. As a teacher, these are perfect for challenge work, free time, or indoor recess! Thanks to Netgalley for the arc.

[Tim Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really excellent puzzle collection. Many are much harder than they look, and one, "The Room with the Lamp," was so obviously impossible that I was paralysed for an hour before I even suspected there might actually be a solution. And yet an hour later I had solved it.

[Hannu Sinisalo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alex Bellos on tämän hetken paras pulmamatematiikkakirjoittaja, ja tämä yli 120 pulman kokoelma on huiman hyvä.

[Maurizio Codogno · Rating 5 out of 5]

I problemi matematici hanno una storia

Questo libro uscito in UK con il titolo So You Think You've Got Problems? (mai capito perché i libri devono avere titoli diversi dalle due parti dello stagno), raccoglie una notevole quantità di problemi, divisi in capitoli a seconda del loro tipo. Alcuni problemi sono dei classici, altri sono nuovi: ogni capitolo comunque comincia con degli antipasti per non spaventare troppo il solutore. La parte secondo me più interessante del libro è il lavorone che Bellos ha fatto per raccontare una storia coerente che leghi i problemi. A proposito di storia, in appendice è riportata la fonte dei problemi (e la segnalazione di Sources in Recreational Mathematics di David Singmaster, la Bibbia nel campo). Se amate i giochi matematici, questo libro fa per voi.