Perilous Problems for Puzzle Lovers: Math, Logic & Word Puzzles to Challenge Your Brain

by Alex Bellos

Put your wits—and survival instincts—to the test! Publisher’s Perilous Problems for Puzzle Lovers was previously published in the UK under the title So You Think You’ve Got Problems? In Perilous Problems for Puzzle Lovers, Alex Bellos collects 125 of the world’s greatest stumpers—many dangerous to your person, and all dangerous to your pride. Brace yourself to wrestle with wordplay, grapple with geometry, and scramble for survival. For example . . .Ten lions and a sheep are in a pen. Any lion who eats the sheep will fall asleep. A sleeping lion will be eaten by another lion, who falls asleep in turn. If the lions are all perfect logicians, what happens? Bellos pairs his fiendish brainteasers with fascinating history, so you’ll meet Alcuin, Sam Loyd, and other puzzle masters of yore—in between deranged despots and wily jailers with an unaccountable taste for riddles. Will you make it out alive? And what about the sheep?

496 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 27, 2020

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

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wasn't the sort of puzzle book I was expecting but it was a fun read. I read some of the puzzles to my 13 y/o son who enjoys a challenge. As another reviewer pointed out on Goodreads, they are rather "mathy" but I found that good for us as homeschoolers. Bellos includes lots of historical puzzles and it was fun to read some of them to my kids. There is a variety of types of puzzles, with some picture types (rotate the rabbits so these three ears are enough for all of them, draw lines on these dots to do this, etc.) and some that are more like math word problems, plus many others.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

[Laura]

I'm probably not going to give this a star rating because it wouldn't be fair. I'm more of a words logic type of puzzle lover, and this is very very mathy. If I was flipping through this book at a store, I would have easily seen that and not bought it because it's just not for me. That said, although I wasn't interested in most of the puzzles, I really liked the text surrounding them. A lot of the puzzles have historical context and academic discussion included, and I found that interesting. The history of a specific puzzle type was worth reading even when I didn't want to do the puzzle.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Alex Bellos! Why has this only got 2 ratings? 🤔