Logical reasoning new puzzles

Author: George J. Summers (U.S.)
Publisher:
Publication Date: 1999-04-01
Features: The puzzles in this book are all written as short mystery cases like "Whodunit." Each puzzle provides several clues, asking the reader, or rather the "detective," to identify which among different objects is the one being sought (or, continuing the analogy, which among the suspicious individuals is the real culprit). In these puzzles, some genuinely require you to uncover a culprit, but the vast majority involve basically law-abiding citizens or purely numerical elements. The general method for solving these puzzles is: at the end of each puzzle, the question states a condition that the object being sought must satisfy. For example, "Of the four baseball teams—Cougars, Reds, Pumas, or Kittens—which won the championship?" specifies "won the championship" as a condition. The clues in the puzzle also explicitly or implicitly state the conditions that each "suspicious individual" must satisfy. The "detective's" task is to discover all the conditions and then determine which—and it is uniquely one—of the "suspicious individuals" can satisfy the conditions stated in the question. The puzzles are arranged in order of increasing difficulty, so if a reader starts with puzzle, progresses in sequence, they will find that they are actually capable of solving puzzles that were previously considered too difficult. To help readers who get stuck, each puzzle is accompanied by a "hint"—located upside down at the bottom of the page—to guide their thoughts in the right direction. Few books on logical puzzles have been published, but Mr. George Summers has made such a contribution. The book contains 50 carefully designed logical puzzles, arranged from easy to difficult. Among the difficult puzzles, even experts may find them challenging. You may not have had the opportunity to test your logical reasoning skills yet, and now is a great chance—don't miss it!