"Another scintillating collection of brilliant problems and paradoxes by the most entertaining logician and set theorist who ever lived." — Martin Gardner "Smullyan is not your run-of-the-mill puzzlemeister; he polishes up old chestnuts, spins variations on a theme, and peoples his logical world with a delightful cast of characters." — Science 82 "I believe Ray Smullyan to be the Lewis Carroll of our times. His little books of logic puzzles will be remembered long after most of us are forgotten." — Peter Denning, Chairman of the Computer Science Department, Naval Postgraduate School "You may experience small frissons of delight as you follow Smullyan into the dizzying heights of Gödel's proof and the very nature of proof, truth, and logic in mathematics." — Kirkus Reviews Discover scintillating new perspectives on the principles of mathematical logic with this puzzle treasury. Inspired by the classic tale of a prisoner's choice between two doors, these whimsically themed challenges allow readers to base their decisions on logic rather than luck. Nineteen chapters advance from relatively simple puzzles and meta-puzzles to highly complex paradoxes involving probability, time, and change. The author, a well-known philosopher and magician as well as a celebrated mathematician and logician, was acclaimed by The New York Times as "a master at translating difficult ideas into stories and puzzles that require no formal background, only patience and a passion to learn."

A range of puzzles dealing with word play and logic, mathematics and philosophy, featuring Alice and the creatures of Wonderland.

Honorable knights, lying knaves, and other fanciful characters populate this unusual survey of the principles underlying the works of Georg Cantor. Created by a renowned mathematician, these engaging puzzles apply logical precepts to issues of infinity, probability, time, and change. They require a strong mathematics background and feature complete solutions.

Kurt Godel, the greatest logician of our time, startled the world of mathematics in 1931 with his Theorem of Undecidability, which showed that some statements in mathematics are inherently "undecidable." His work on the completeness of logic, the incompleteness of number theory, and the consistency of the axiom of choice and the continuum theory brought him further worldwide fame. In this introductory volume, Raymond Smullyan, himself a well-known logician, guides the reader through the fascinating world of Godel's incompleteness theorems. The level of presentation is suitable for anyone with a basic acquaintance with mathematical logic. As a clear, concise introduction to a difficult but essential subject, the book will appeal to mathematicians, philosophers, and computer scientists.

This is an exciting if not rambling account of events of Raymond Smullyan's four lives -- as a mathematical logician, musician, magician, and author -- together with thoughts that come to his mind as he recalls them. This book includes topics from some of Smullyan's twenty-six books, as well as many of his favorite anecdotes and jokes. It also presents some generalizations of theorems of the great logicians Gödel and Tarski, and discusses logic in general, and how he won his wife with a logic trick! Smullyan also relates some of his teaching experiences, and expresses his views on mathematical education, and how our present textbooks are primarily responsible for its decline! About his life as a pianist, Smullyan relates a good deal about his experiences with the Piano Society -- a wonderful organization to which he is a staunch contributor, and how he has had such delightful relations with many of its members. Last but not least, Smullyan recounts how he has known some lovely ladies over the years.