Book cover.Enlarge Cover Media/Desk Copy Request
ISBN: 9798893030280
Published: October 15, 2024
Price: $16.95 US / $21.95 CAN
Paperback: 224 pages
Buy the Book
Buy the eBook
Puzzle Me Twice
70 Simple Puzzles (Almost) Everyone Gets Wrong
by Alex Bellos
 

“A brilliant collection of puzzles. Never has getting the answer wrong felt so good!”—G. T. Karber, author of Murdle

Most people get these puzzles wrong. Will you beat the odds?

From mathy mind-benders to eye-fooling illusions, here are 70 perplexing puzzles of every kind. But they all have one key thing in common—a wrong answer that seems so right! In Puzzle Me Twice, you’ll have to think—and think again—to overrule your first instinct and uncover the truth. For example:

If a hen and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half, how many eggs do half a dozen hens lay in half a dozen days?*

Bestselling author Alex Bellos wrangles math and physics, logic and wordplay, optical illusions, card games, and more to tie readers’ brains in pleasurable knots. It’s a merry tour of the many ways our reasoning can go wrong—and how we can be more fool-proof in the future. Puzzle on!

*Four times as many hens, over four times as many days, lay 16 times as many eggs: 1.5 × 16 = 24 eggs.

“A brilliant collection of puzzles. Never has getting the answer wrong felt so good!”—G. T. Karber, author of Murdle

Praise for Alex Bellos

“I'm a sucker for Alex Bellos’s books—they’re just such fun.”—Tim Harford, author of The Data Detective

“Think of the best storyteller you know and the coolest teacher you ever had, and now you’ve got some idea of what Alex Bellos is like.”—Steven Strogatz, author of The Joy of x
Alex Bellos Puzzle Books

Alex Bellos holds a degree in mathematics and philosophy from Oxford University. His bestselling books Here’s Looking at Euclid and The Grapes of Math have been translated into more than 20 languages and were both shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book prize. His puzzle books include Can You Solve My Problems?, Puzzle Ninja, Perilous Problems for Puzzle Lovers, and The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book, and he is also the coauthor of the coloring books Patterns of the Universe and Visions of the Universe. He has launched an elliptical pool table, LOOP. He writes a popular-math blog and a puzzle blog for the Guardian, and he won the Association of British Science Writers award for best science blog in 2016. He lives in London.


alexbellos.com