In this double-treat edition combining Math Puzzles and Games and More Math Puzzles and Games, the inventive Michael Holt presents enough brain teasers, math tricks, diversions and recreations to keep young and old happily challenged for thousands of hours.
An extensive chapter presents reasoning and logical games that require no formal math training at all. One of the simplest, Mancalla, dates from time unknown, and is still played in African villages today, as the author has observed. Others include Peggity, a modern version of the venerable Japanese game of Go; traditional favorites such as Nim and Battleship; Sprouts, a new topology game; and Hex, a recent arrival from Denmark.
Blending the best of classic math puzzles with his own inventions, Holt draws on topology and other off-beat aspects of geometry: routes, knots, vanishing lines, match puzzles, coin and shunting problems. Other puzzles put oneβs reasoning skills to the test.
The book is fully illustrated with more than 425 line drawings that pose the problems and demonstrate their solution. All else that is required is pencil and paper (usually) and most of all β wits.
Michael Holt is the author of Math Puzzles and Games, Let's Play Math, and numerous other successful books on science and math for all ages in this country and in England. A lecturer and TV personality, he is dedicated to exploring new ways of making math and science exciting to both children and adults. He evolves his games through literally hours of playing them β with children, friends, and his all-too-willingly captive audiences.