Customer Reviews

Alice in Puzzle-Land

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He is "simply the best" is the phrase that most accurately describes the ability of Raymond Smullyan to create puzzles in logic. Written at a lower level than some of his other books, no background in formal logic is necessary to understand and solve all of the problems in this collection.
While the novice will find the problems understandable, even the veteran will experience new levels of logic consciousness as they twist their way through to the solutions. As the name implies, all of the problems in some way involve characters created by Lewis Carroll, and solutions to all are given at the end of the book.
If you wish to have your intellectual muscles worked and smile while it is done, then this book is for you.

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission

This time the reader comes along for Alice's adventures in Wonderland as a logical analysis, to asses the logical understanding and thoughtfulness of the inhabitant's minds (rendering surprising results). The puzzles go first from a young child's birthday party, then onto the mysteries of the eateries in the Queen's Kitchen. Next, Alice decides from obscure facts and hints who is mad in Wonderland (waddya go Alice!). Next tackle some clever algebric and arithmetic problems of the two queens and Griffon...just don't use algebra and arithmetic! Then help the White King decipher who the devil was the spy in his various trials. Travel through the woods to play some interesting card games with the Tweedles. Then kick back as Humpty Dumpty, with his little desire for brain cells, gives a 'true logician's' lecture on the nature of paradoxes and Godel's Incompleteness Theorm. At long last wrestle with some truly difficult puzzles in which the abscent-minded White Knight has almost completely forgotten the facts of some very interesting trials. Then asses the nature of a Looking-Glass logician. And finally analyse one of life's deepest mysteries...dreams. Did the Red King actually hit on the mark with his propositions of Type A and Type B? Or was he perhaps just a figment of Alice's imagination? But then...well, I'll let you decide. At any rate...read this book!

Puzzles, like riddles, are excellent ways to teach logic. All puzzle books of Smullyan are good. This one is relatively easy, and for a young person who enjoyed the stories of Alice in Wonderland, it could be real fun. My expectations were too high, I expected not only the author to use the characters of Alice, but I guess I expected him to be as inventive as Carroll himself. But most puzzles are of the well-known type: "three people answer this question like this and that, which one is telling the truth?" The puzzles themselves are not original or mind-bending, Alice is only a "decor," so I got the feeling that it was a recycling of old material. Mostly.
If you enjoy puzzles and you have kids, this is nevertheless a great gift.

Too many of the puzzles baffled me. Maybe I'm just too stupid to get them. Loved Humpty-Dumpty's chapter though, the one with the paradoxes, that was really interesting and didn't involve flipping from the page to the back to the solution and then back. >.<
I wish this book was written in more of a story format than this, with the answers cleverly woven in instead of just in the back. Wouldn't this be great if it had more plot? =P