"A fascinating, challenging book." — A. L. A. Booklist. Experiment with cryptography — the science of secret writing. Cipher and decipher codes: transposition and polyalphabetical ciphers, famous codes, typewriter and telephone codes, codes that use playing cards, knots, and swizzl... read more
Mental Magic: Surefire Tricks to Amaze Your Friends by Martin Gardner, Jeff Sinclair Professor Picanumba has dozens of surefire tricks up his sleeve — and he's willing to show junior mathemagicians how to predict the answers to 88 word and number challenges. Includes solutions and illustrations.
Puzzling Optical Illusions by Thomas Crawford A rich assortment of visual mind-bogglers, including "impossible objects" — constructions that look fine on paper but can't possibly exist in reality — as well as pulsating patterns, vanishing spots, more. 60 illustrations.
Race Against the Clock! Secret Agent Activity Book by Jeremy Elder Loaded with 27 exciting espionage-related puzzles, this book requires thrilling acts of derring-do. Young spies can engage in codebreaking, solve word searches, follow mazes, look for hidden objects, and other challenges.
Laugh Out Loud Letters for Boys by Diana Zourelias Tell Mom that you love her — or that you licked all the cookies! Kids "write" these 23 Mad Libs–style letters by checking the boxes next to silly or sincere phrases.
Code Crackers: Trapdoor to Treachery by Kieran Fanning This is no ordinary detective story! To investigate a series of mysterious thefts, kids must solve puzzles that show them which page of the story to turn to next. Includes solutions.
Code Crackers: Voyage to Victory by Kieran Fanning Young readers can help two time travelers escape a ferocious 8th-century Viking crew by solving an intriguing series of puzzles that will jump them to different pages in the book. Solutions.
Winning Contract Bridge by Edgar Kaplan With an Introduction by Samuel M. Stayman. Bridge champion offers unbeatable advice for all players. Covers fundamental bidding and play to sophisticated tactical maneuvers. Rules. Glossary. Tables.
Mind-Boggling Word Puzzles by Martin Gardner, V.G. Myers A famous puzzlemeister presents 103 perplexing brainteasers, anagrams, and rebus and logic puzzles. There are clues — and humor — in the 69 whimsical illustrations, plus solutions for anyone who gets stumped.
Product Description:
"A fascinating, challenging book." — A. L. A. Booklist. Experiment with cryptography — the science of secret writing. Cipher and decipher codes: transposition and polyalphabetical ciphers, famous codes, typewriter and telephone codes, codes that use playing cards, knots, and swizzle sticks...even invisible writing and sending messages through outer space. Hours of intrigue and challenge. 45 diagrams.
The worldwide mathematical community was saddened by the death of Martin Gardner on May 22, 2010. Martin was 95 years old when he died, and had written 70 or 80 books during his long lifetime as an author. Martin's first Dover books were published in 1956 and 1957: Mathematics, Magic and Mystery, one of the first popular books on the intellectual excitement of mathematics to reach a wide audience, and Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, certainly one of the first popular books to cast a devastatingly skeptical eye on the claims of pseudoscience and the many guises in which the modern world has given rise to it. Both of these pioneering books are still in print with Dover today along with more than a dozen other titles of Martin's books. They run the gamut from his elementary Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing, which has been enjoyed by generations of younger readers since the 1980s, to the more demanding The New Ambidextrous Universe: Symmetry and Asymmetry from Mirror Reflections to Superstrings, which Dover published in its final revised form in 2005.
To those of us who have been associated with Dover for a long time, however, Martin was more than an author, albeit a remarkably popular and successful one. As a member of the small group of long-time advisors and consultants, which included NYU's Morris Kline in mathematics, Harvard's I. Bernard Cohen in the history of science, and MIT's J. P. Den Hartog in engineering, Martin's advice and editorial suggestions in the formative 1950s helped to define the Dover publishing program and give it the point of view which — despite many changes, new directions, and the consequences of evolution — continues to be operative today. In the Author's Own Words: "Politicians, real-estate agents, used-car salesmen, and advertising copy-writers are expected to stretch facts in self-serving directions, but scientists who falsify their results are regarded by their peers as committing an inexcusable crime. Yet the sad fact is that the history of science swarms with cases of outright fakery and instances of scientists who unconsciously distorted their work by seeing it through lenses of passionately held beliefs."
"A surprising proportion of mathematicians are accomplished musicians. Is it because music and mathematics share patterns that are beautiful?" — Martin Gardner
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