Amusements in Mathematics

Abstract

MR. DUDENEY is famous as a composer of puzzles of a semi-mathematical character, and for some years questions by him of this kind have appeared regularly in several English periodicals. He has now collected a large number of them, added a few new ones, and published the whole in book-form classified under various heads. The questions, more than four hundred in number, range over so wide a field that it is difficult to describe them succinctly, but usually they consist of brief statements, put in a picturesque form, of problems that might conceivably occur. Of these conundrums, some are variations of familiar puzzles, others are new, some are easy, others difficult, but, broadly speaking, all are interesting, and none can be answered without care and thought. In a few cases the point of the problem depends on the wording-a device open to criticism, though one which, in his preface, Mr, Dudeney explicitly defends. The solutions are given separately in the latter part of the book, and no one acquainted with Mr. Dudeney's reputation will need the assurance that they are ingenious and suggestive.

Amusements in Mathematics.

By H. E. Dudeney. Pp. viii + 258. (London: T. Nelson and Sons, Ltd.) Price 3s. 6d. net.