Games for Your Mind : : The History and Future of Logic Puzzles / / Jason Rosenhouse.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2020 English
• VerfasserIn: Rosenhouse, Jason,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (352 p.) :; 35 b/w illus. 32 tables.

A lively and engaging look at logic puzzles and their role in recreation, mathematics, and philosophyLogic puzzles were first introduced to the public by Lewis Carroll in the late nineteenth century and have been popular ever since. Games like Sudoku and Mastermind are fun and engrossing recreational activities, but they also share deep foundations in mathematical logic and are worthy of serious intellectual inquiry. Games for Your Mind explores the history and future of logic puzzles while enabling you to test your skill against a variety of puzzles yourself.In this informative and entertaining book, Jason Rosenhouse begins by introducing readers to logic and logic puzzles and goes on to reveal the rich history of these puzzles. He shows how Carroll's puzzles presented Aristotelian logic as a game for children, yet also informed his scholarly work on logic. He reveals how another pioneer of logic puzzles, Raymond Smullyan, drew on classic puzzles about liars and truthtellers to illustrate Kurt Gödel's theorems and illuminate profound questions in mathematical logic. Rosenhouse then presents a new vision for the future of logic puzzles based on nonclassical logic, which is used today in computer science and automated reasoning to manipulate large and sometimes contradictory sets of data.Featuring a wealth of sample puzzles ranging from simple to extremely challenging, this lively and engaging book brings together many of the most ingenious puzzles ever devised, including the "Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever," metapuzzles, paradoxes, and the logic puzzles in detective stories.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Preface -- I. The Pain and Pleasure of Logic -- 1. Is Logic Boring and Pointless? -- 2. Logic Just for Fun -- II. Lewis Carroll and Aristotelian Logic -- 3. Aristotle's Syllogistic -- 4. The Empuzzlement of Aristotelian Logic -- 5. Sorites Puzzles -- 6. Carroll's Contributions to Mind -- III. Raymond Smullyan and Mathematical Logic -- 7. Liars and Truthtellers -- 8. From Aristotle to Russell -- 9. Formal Systems in Life and Math -- 10. The Empuzzlement of Gödel's Theorems -- 11. Question Puzzles -- IV. Puzzles Based on Nonclassical Logics -- 12. Should "Logics" Be a Word? -- 13. Many-Valued Knights and Knaves -- V. Miscellaneous Topics -- 14. The Saga of the Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever -- 15. Metapuzzles -- 16. Paradoxes -- 17. A Guide to Some Literary Logic Puzzles -- Glossary -- References -- Index