The Unexpected Hanging and Other Mathematical Diversions

Book Description
Seasoned with Gardner's interest in the history and philosophy of science, this delightful book is a treasure-trove of puzzles, anecdotes, games, and logical theory. These intriguing problems, collected from Gardner's Scientific American columns, involve knots, interlocking rings, rotations and reflections, logical paradox, two-dimensional universes, chess strategies, and gambling odds.

"Gardner conjures problems that are both profound and silly; exquisite truths and outrageous absurdities; paradoxes, anagrams, palindromes and party tricks. . . . He knows, better than most, how many amazing true things there are in the world."–Newsweek

Description:
This book contains amusing and intriguing problems involving knots, interlocking rings, rotations and and reflections, logical paradox, topological theory, two-dimensional universes, chess strategies, and gambling odds.

Table of Contents

Note to the 1991 Edition
1. The Paradox of the Unexpected Hanging
2. Knots and Borromean Rings
3. The Transcendental Number e
4. Geometric Dissections
5. Scarne on Gambling
6. The Church of the Fourth Dimension
7. Eight Problems
8. A Matchbox Game-Learning Machine
9. Spirals
10. Rotations and Reflections
11. Peg Solitaire
12. Flatlands
13. Chicago Magic Convention
14. Tests of Divisibility
15. Nine Problems
16. The Eight Queens and Other Chessboard Diversions
17. A Loop of String
18. Curves of Constant Width
19. Rep-Tiles: Replicating Figures on the Plane
20. Thirty-Seven Catch Questions
Afterword
Bibliography