From the Back Cover
This book contains a large variety of intriguing puzzles with detailed ingenious solutions generally not found elsewhere. This book is a great treasure for everybody who enjoys the beauty of fascinating world of recreational mathematics. Puzzles in the book can be browsed at random as these are not grouped in any orderly manner. Apart from puzzle enthusiasts and mathlovers, the book is considered of immense value for aspirants of Math Olympiad, CAT/MBA and job interviews of big companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, NVidia, Oracle, Adobe, Morgan Stanley, Bloomberg, etc. The title of puzzles has been suitably framed. Repetition of similar type of puzzles has been avoided to keep the book in a concise form. However, important aspects of similar puzzles, if any, have been covered in comments section.
This book is divided into four chapters (Chaps. 1-4): Chapter 1 contains 25 short riddles and brainteasers. These puzzles vary from simple but tricky to challenging ones. Chapter 2 contains detailed solutions to all the short riddles and brainteasers given in Chapter 1. Chapter 3 contains 125 creative puzzles of varying difficulty level covering arithmetic and algebraic puzzles on clock, calendar, weight, age and digital puzzles, geometric puzzles, logical reasoning puzzles, and combinatorial puzzles, match puzzles and game puzzles like "kaun banega crorepati" (who will become a Decamillionaire), new year winner, winning numbers, etc. Some famous and old puzzles like Cheryl's birthday, Bachets weight, liquid decanting, crossing bridge/river/desert, etc., have also been included so that readers can find all types of puzzles at one place. Only basic mathematics is required to solve these puzzles, but most of these puzzles are tricky and can be simplified by ingenious ideas. Chapter 4 contains detailed solutions to all the creative puzzles given in Chapter 3.
SHYAM SUNDER GUPTA is former Principal Chief Engineer, Indian Railways, Government of India. He is an Indian Railway Service of Engineers (IRSE) officer of batch 1981. He has experience of more than 35 years in various managerial, administrative and technical positions such as Principal Chief Engineer, Executive Director, Divisional Railway Manager, Director/RDSO on Indian Railways. A recreational mathematician, who is actively involved in popularising mathematics at the national and international levels, his major discoveries are equal product of reversible numbers (EPORNS), rare numbers, unique numbers, palindromic pseudo primes, fifth-order prime polynomial, 17350-digit memorable prime, etc.
His interest in number recreations dates back to 1978, when his first paper "Miracles of last digit" was published. Since then his contributions have been published in
Science Reporter,
Science Today,
Math Education,
The American Mathematical Monthly,
The Mathematical Gazette,
Mathematical Spectrum, Scientia Magna, and several other international books like
Unsolved problems in Number theory (by R.K. Guy),
The Universal book of Mathematics (by David J. Darling),
The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers (by David Wells),
Prime Numbers: The Most Mysterious Figures in Math (by David Wells),
Prime Curios!: The Dictionary of Prime Number Trivia (by Chris K. Caldwell and G.L. Honaker), and
Those Fascinating Numbers (by Jean-Marie De Koninck). He is a co-author of the book,
Civil Engineering through Objective Questions.
