Martin Gardner, puzzle master extraordinaire • Hacker News Board

Re: Martin Gardner, puzzle master extraordinaire

#11

Post by andrewl » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 11:35 AM UTC

diziet wrote: post #5

There is an interesting kind of a puzzle / challenge where a set of objects is presented that follows some certain rule. The rule can be arbitrary -- these objects are all circles, these objects are in the top portion of the box, these objects are pictures of cats, etc. The objective is to identify the rule in the set given, that does not fit any of the objects in another set (also given) . I can't recall or be able…

That reminds me a bit of the Set card game:

http://www.amazon.com/Set-Family-Game-Visual-Perception/dp/B...

Re: Martin Gardner, puzzle master extraordinaire

#12

Post by jameshart » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 2:48 PM UTC

andrewl wrote: post #11

diziet wrote: post #5

There is an interesting kind of a puzzle / challenge where a set of objects is presented that follows some certain rule. The rule can be arbitrary -- these objects are all circles, these objects are in the top portion of the box, these objects are pictures of cats, etc. The objective is to identify the rule in the set given, that does not fit any of the objects in another set (also given) . I can't recall or be able…

That reminds me a bit of the Set card game: http://www.amazon.com/Set-Family-Game-Visual-Perception/dp/B...

Along those lines, you might want to check out the card game 'Eleusis', which was written about by Martin Gardner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusis_(card_game)

Re: Martin Gardner, puzzle master extraordinaire

#13

Post by gphilip » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 4:05 PM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #7

zem wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for me it was gardner, and yakov perelman's "mathematics can be fun". i still mourn that the latter went out of print and has all but vanished.

Archive.org to the rescue! https://archive.org/details/MathematicsCanBeFun-1 (Offtopic: honestly, I love that website and the work they do. My personal favourite find there is a full copy of "On The Spiritual In Art" by Kandinsky. Reading his thoughts behind his artworks is so much more valuable in bringing his artworks to life than listening to rambling art critics.)

Rough translation of the Preface on page 4 by the person who scanned the book. The preface is written (mostly) in Malayalam [1], the language of the state of Kerala [2] in India:

I bought this book in 1986 for 50 Rupees [3]. Since it was a great book, I used to read it often, and many of my friends used to borrow it. Somebody borrowed it in 2007, and I never got it back. I searched the entire world for a copy, new or old, cheap or expensive .... I couldn't find one. Then a friend told me that if there is a copy anywhere in the world then he would buy it for me, no matter the price. He heard that it was available with Abe(?) Books in the U.S for $86, and ordered a copy. I waited for it to arrive ...... Then I got the regret message "Your consignment has been missed during transit, and we have no additional copy. Your payment will be redeemed however." I kept up my search. Then I got to know that a person in Koyilandy [4] had a copy, and I took a laptop and a scanner and journeyed from one end of Kerala to the other to reach there. It took 7 hours to scan the the entire book. I converted the entire corpus into text and edited it to make it identical to the original text, and added all the line drawings using CorelDraw to get it to its current form.

If you ever get your hands on this, then keep in mind that so much effort went into its making. Shouldn't I have done at least this much in return for the kindness which my good friend showed me, in offering to buy the book for me even at an exorbitant price? I offer this completed scan first to him, like a gift of the Magi [5]. I look back and think, was it worth it? Yes, absolutely.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayalam

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala

[3] A significant sum in those days. A good meal could be had for 5 Rupees or less in those days.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koyilandy

[5] He doesn't say "gift of the Magi" in so many words, but "a gift of a piece of a commonly found plant in return for a piece of broken slate pencil", but I guess the idea is somewhat similar.