Enlarge Cover
Media/Desk Copy Request
Put your wits—and survival instincts—to the test!
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?
“Smart thinker Alex Bellos . . . has designed these brilliantly challenging puzzles to send the little grey brain cells into overdrive . . . knotty problems, hidden patterns, confusing conundrums, and devious survival situations.”—Sunday Express“This puzzle book by the brilliant [Alex Bellos] is keeping me nice and entertained. . . . Very clever.”—Rachel Riley, cohost of Countdown
“Lots of Ah, Aha, and Haha, which is the mark of a good puzzle.”—Rob Eastaway, coauthor of Why Do Buses Come in Threes?
“As anyone who follows his Guardian puzzle column will know, Alex has very good taste in puzzles. Unsurprisingly, therefore, this is a great collection.”—Chalkdust magazine
