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100 Numerical Games
By Pierre Berloquin, Denis Dugas Dover Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 1976 Pierre Berloquin
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-80569-6
FOREWORD
Pierre Berloquin, who put together this stimulating and delightful collection of mind benders, is a clever young Frenchman who was born in 1939 in Tours and graduated in 1962 from the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines in Paris. His training as an operations research engineer gave him an excellent background in mathematics and logical thinking.
But Berloquin was more interested in writing than in working on operations research problems. After two years with a Paris advertising agency, he decided to try his luck at freelance writing and this is how he has earned his living since. In 1964 he began his popular column on "Games and Paradoxes" in the magazine Science et Vie (Science and Life). Another column, "From a Logical Point of View," appears twice monthly in The World of Science, a supplement of the Paris newspaper Le Monde. Occasionally he contributes to other French magazines. One of his favorite avocations is leading groups of "créativite," a French cocktail of brainstorming, synectics, and encounter therapy, for the discovery of new ideas and the solution of problems — a logical extension of his interest in puzzles.
Berloquin's published books are Le Livre des Jeux (card and board games), Le Jeu de Tarot (tarot card game), Testez Votre Intelligence (intelligence tests), 100 Grandes Réussites (solitaire games), Un Souvenir d'Enfance d'Evariste Galois (Memoir of the Childhood of Evariste Galois) and 100 Jeux de Cartes Classiques (card games); he is coauthor of Voulez-Vous Jouer avec Nous (Come Play with Us) and Le Livre des Divertissements (party games).
This volume is Berloquin's own translation into English of one of his four paperback collections of brainteasers which have been enormously popular in France and Italy since they were published in Paris in 1973. This one is concerned only with numerical puzzles. The other three contain geometric, logical, and alphabetical problems. Denis Dugas, the graphic artist who illustrated all four books, is one of the author's old friends.
The puzzles in this collection have been carefully selected or designed (many are original with the author or artist) so that none will be too difficult for the average reader who is not a mathematician to solve, and at the same time not be too easy. They are all crisply, clearly given, accurately answered at the back of the book, and great fun to work on whether you crack them or not.
At present, Berloquin is living in Neuilly, a Paris suburb, with his wife, Annie, and their two children.
Martin Gardner ]FOR
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Excerpted from 100 Numerical Games by Pierre Berloquin, Denis Dugas. Copyright © 1976 Pierre Berloquin. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
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