Puzzle Box, Volume 3

by Ali Kilick, Peter Grabarchuk (Editor), Serhiy Grabarchuk (Editor), Andrea Gilbert, Dennis Shasha

Overview

A car dealer sells two cars for $9,999 each — one at a 10% profit, the other at a 10% loss. Overall, did the dealer make or lose money?
How many common words of six letters can you make from "machine," using each letter only once per word?
Raoul asked his brother's wife's mother-in-law's only husband's only daughter to join him and his wife for lunch. What relation is she to Raoul?
Decipher hidden quotes, reposition matchsticks to form equilateral triangles, navigate complex mazes, and solve scores of other intriguing challenges with this puzzle treasury. The third in a series of collected brain-teasers, conundrums, and riddles, this volume presents a splendid variety of puzzles created by a dozen renowned mathematicians and puzzle lovers.
The 300 original exercises, printed in full color, include 19 different kinds of puzzles, including: 3-D puzzles, chess puzzles, connections, dissections, foldings, geometrical puzzles, logic problems, matchstick puzzles, mazes, moving pieces, number puzzles, put-togethers, strimkos, sudoku, and visual and word challenges. The difficulty level of each puzzle is marked by stars, ranging from 2 to 5; 3 stars indicate an average-level challenge. Complete solutions for every puzzle are included.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780486816852
Publisher:	Dover Publications
Publication date:	11/15/2017
Series:	Dover Brain Games & Puzzles
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	8.25(w) x 11.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Peter and Serhiy Grabarchuk are part of the Grabarchuk Puzzle Family. Over a period of decades they have produced puzzle books, puzzle apps, interactive puzzles, and more.

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

This collection is the 3rd volume of the Puzzle Box series. As in the two previous volumes, a dozen of the world's most renowned mathematicians, puzzle creators, and devoted puzzle lovers have collectively contributed three hundred of their best puzzle creations. You can read about the authors of this book in the previous double-page spread.

None of the puzzles in this book have previously been published in the printed book format, although some of them were published electronically in 100 Matchstick Puzzles, 103 Puzzle Quizzes, and 104 Puzzle Quizzes Kindle books, puzzles.com, puzzlersparadise.com, clickmazes.com, and Puzzlium.

There are puzzles of nineteen different types: 3D puzzles, chess puzzles, coin puzzles, connections, dissections, folding puzzles, geometrical puzzles, logic problems, matchstick puzzles, mazes, moving pieces, number puzzles, put-togethers, strimko, sudoku, tetrominoes, visual puzzles, weighings, and word puzzles.

The difficulty level of each puzzle is marked by stars, 2 to 5, with about 3 stars as the average difficulty. Most of the puzzles are intended for general solvers, so you will be able to figure them out without any special knowledge. But several of them are real puzzle nuts, which will require some special skills and can bring long hours of solving and enjoyment.

Note that Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro, Inc.

There are specific requirements to solving some puzzles:

To solve the chess-based problems you'll need to know only the standard rules for the chess game and moving a king, queen, rook, bishop, knight, and pawn.

In all matchstick puzzles you should use matchsticks as unit segments. You cannot bend, break, overlap, or cross matchsticks, and you should always use them at their full length without loose ends.

In weighing puzzles with weights balancing on rods and strings, it assumes that the whole system balances when both sides of each rod have equal torque. Also, assume that the rods and strings are weightless.

In the hidden-quote puzzles, where the scrambled letters appear in color above the grids, the letters just above each column must be unscrambled and placed into that column only. The quote reads horizontally, from left to right, across each row. The white squares indicate missing letters, the black squares indicate the end of a word or the space between two words. Words can wrap around from one row to the next. Note that punctuation is omitted.

Please note that some puzzles may have several solutions, only some of which are shown in the Solutions section.

Our deep belief is that this colorful puzzle selection will give every reader many wonderful puzzles to solve and enjoy.

– Serhiy and Peter Grabarchuk San Jose, CA, USA

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Puzzle Box Volume 3"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Peter Grabarchuk and Serhiy Grabarchuk.
Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Foreword
Authors
Introduction
Puzzles
Solutions
Index