Book Description

Pump up those mental muscles with more than 20 strategy games your family can enjoy at home or in the car. Strategy games are a whetstone to sharpen thinking skills. They encourage a creatively logical approach to solving problems as players consider their options, change their plans in reaction to new situations, and look for the less obvious solutions in order to outwit their opponents. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Good book except for 1 flaw.
My mom got me this book a few days ago. I've
only done 10 out of the 21 puzzles, but I feel
that it challenges me well, and it is a good book.
There is one problem though. Puzzle #7 doesn't
work out. I even looked at the answer, and it still
doesn't work. They're trying to say that 33x38=912,
when it actually equalls 1254. My mom and I are
both quite upset about this, but the quality of the
other problems nearly makes up for this flaw. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Take A Look At A Good Book is the third book in a series.The popular features of the two earlier books, Have Some Sums to Solve and At Last!! Encoded Totals, Second Addition, have been retained in Take A Look At A Good Book.The thirty-eight puzzles presented in Section 1, along with the cover, dedication, and preface puzzles, all fall into the special subcategory of additive alphametics. Each of their sums has a unique decoding, sometimes insured by the imposition of an initial condition.

Within the subcategory, two varieties of alphametics are include— the ideal, doubly-true type (abbreviated "i.d.t.") and the narrative type. In the former, all ten digits appear in the solution and a mathematically correct addition example results when the problem is read aloud. Directed approaches to each of the puzzles are offered in Section 2. These strategic outlines enable the solver to skirt around pitfalls and obstacles without removing the challenge associated with the quest for the actual answer.

In Section 3, solutions to all puzzles are given. The order of presentation of these solutions is intentionally different from that of the puzzles. This section also contains responses to all queries raised within the context of the narrative alphametics.

The major difference between this and the two earlier works is the prevalence here of "wider" i.d.t.s, wherein the sums span nine or more columns. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An excellent collection of alphametics.
One of the most simple and enjoyable problems in mathematics are the doubly-true alphametics. These are problems that are a combination of words that make up a correct expression in a language as well as a valid arithmetic operation when the letters are uniquely replaced by digits. The name of the book is an alphametic, where the title

TAKE + A + LOOK + AT + A + GOOD = BOOK

yields the solution

3895 + 8 + 1009 + 83 + 8 + 2006 = 7009

among others.
The author is the reigning expert in alphametics, having been the editor of the alphametics column of Journal of Recreational Mathematics for many years. This book is a collection of some of the best problems that Kahan has created or encountered over the years. The problems are not hard, simply requiring knowledge of basic algebra and a little tenacity to solve them. If you enjoy mathematical puzzles, then this is a book that will interest you. ... Read more