Games for Your Mind

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Logic puzzles, popularized by Lewis Carroll in the late nineteenth century, have captivated minds ever since. While games like Sudoku and Mastermind provide enjoyable pastimes, they are rooted in mathematical logic and merit serious exploration. This book delves into the history and future of logic puzzles, allowing readers to challenge their skills with a variety of puzzles. Jason Rosenhouse introduces the fundamentals of logic and puzzles, tracing their rich history. He illustrates how Carroll's puzzles made Aristotelian logic accessible to children while also influencing his academic work. Another key figure, Raymond Smullyan, utilized classic puzzles about liars and truthtellers to explain Kurt Gödel's theorems and address significant questions in mathematical logic. Rosenhouse proposes a new perspective on logic puzzles, incorporating nonclassical logic, which is relevant in computer science and automated reasoning for handling complex and contradictory data sets. The book features an array of puzzles, from simple to extremely challenging, including the "Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever," metapuzzles, paradoxes, and those found in detective stories, making it a lively and engaging resource for puzzle enthusiasts.