Puzzling Adventures: Tales of Strategy, Logic, and Mathematical Skill.

PUZZLING ADVENTURES: Tales of Strategy, Logic, and Mathematical Skill DENNIS E. SHASHA

Readers may be familiar with the escapades of Dr. Jacob Ecco, a mathematical man of mystery and a logical detective extraordinaire, his precocious niece Liane, and Baskerton the logician. All three characters appear regularly in Shasha's "Puzzling Adventures" column in Scientific American. In this book, the author elaborates on his columns to further challenge readers' powers of reasoning, logic, and deduction. Puzzlers need only these skills to tackle the 42 puzzles here. The puzzles fall into five categories: logic, graphs and circuits, strategy and games, science and form, and combinatorics. Sample entries challenge readers to unravel the tangled love lives of members of a primitive tribe without knowing their language, figure out how a strike by a European truck-drivers' union could cause maximum traffic disruption, and determine how to maximize a person's chances of cracking a safe in a reasonable amount of time. Dr. Ecco and Liane offer "warm-up" exercises that are simpler versions of the major puzzles, intended to nudge readers toward the concepts they need to complete each investigation. Norton, 2005, 227 p., b&w illus., paperback, $15.95.