The tradition of honoring Martin Gardner continues with this edited collection of articles by those who have been inspired by Gardner to enter mathematics, to enter magic, to bring magic into their mathematics, or to bring mathematics into their magic. Contributing authors include world-leading puzzle designers, puzzle collectors, mathematicians, and magicians.
The variety of articles includes card or magic tricks (with a mathematical trick behind them), the history behind given puzzles, mathematically interesting objects involving the number seven, and puzzles for the reader to solve. Specific puzzles discussed include tangram, 14-15 Puzzle, seven-coloring of the torus, packing circles, Crazy Elephant Dance, and more!
History and Hoaxes
Sam Loyd’s Most Successful Hoax
Jerry Slocum
Numbers and Shapes
The Seven-Colored Torus
sarah-marie belcastro and Carolyn Yackel
A Property of Complete Symbols
Peter Hilton, Jean Pedersen, and Byron Walden
Seven-Fold Symmetry in Mathematica(l) Graphics and Physical Models
Sandor Kabai
Seven Knots and Knots in the Seven-Color Map
Louis H. Kauffman
Seven from the Sea
Michael S. Longuet-Higgins
Seven Staggering Sequences
N. J. A. Sloane
Seven Water Lilies
Peter Gabor Szabo and Zsofia Ruttkay
Puzzles and Games
Developing the Transmission Puzzle
M. Oskar van Deventer
Triple-7 Hamiltonian Chess
David S. Dillon, Jeremiah Farrell, and Tom Rodgers
Retrolife
Yossi Elran
The Logologicomathemagical 7 ×7 Puzzle
Jeremiah Farrell and Robert Friedhoffer
Seven Roads to Roam: A Magical Journey
Jeremiah Farrell and Judith H. Morrel
Fractal Tilings Based on Dissections
Robert W. Fathauer
Creating the NAVIGATI Puzzle
Adrian Fisher
Crazy Elephant Dance
Markus Gotz
The Two Ovals-to-Table Story
Serhiy Grabarchuk
Folding Regular Heptagons
Thomas C. Hull
Combinatorial Philosophy
Kate Jones
Variations of the 14-15 Puzzle
Rodolfo Kurchan
Pentomino Battleships
Mogens Esrom Larsen
Horses in the Stream and Other Short Stories
Earnest Hammingway
A Potpourri of Polygonal and Polyhedral Puzzles
Alan H. Schoen
The Hexa-Dodeca-Flexagon
Ann Schwartz and Jeff Rutzky
Golomb, Gardner, Benjamin and Jones: Midwives to a Puzzle
Norton Starr
Walk, Slide, and Jump
James W. Stephens
Polyomino Number Theory Developments
Robert Wainwright
Biography
Alan Schoen, Tom Rodgers, Ed Pegg Jr
The final section tells the stories of how various mathematical games were invented, and if you are a fan of them gives many that you might not have heard of before. ... whether you are interested in puzzles, origami or card tricks, it has them all. ... If you are bored with doing Sudoku and fancy reading about games of a similar ilk, then this is the book for you.
—Simon Craik, London Mathematical Society, May 2010... Over two-thirds of the book consists of nineteen articles on puzzles and games ... these involve quite a spread of mathematics, including dissections, knots, Hamiltonian circuits, paper folding, groups and coding, along with a little philosophy.
—E. J. Barbeau, Mathematical Reviews, July 2010
