The Lady or the Tiger? and Other Logic Puzzles

by Smullyan, Raymond M.

• ISBN13: 9780486470276
• ISBN10: 048647027X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-04-23
• Publisher: Dover Publications

Summary

"Another scintillating collection of brilliant problems and paradoxes by the most entertaining logician and set theorist who ever lived." Martin Gardner. Inspired by the classic tale of a prisoner's dilemma, these whimsically themed challenges involve paradoxes about probability, time, and change; metapuzzles; and self-referentiality. Nineteen chapters advance in difficulty from relatively simple to highly complex.

Author Biography

Born in New York City in 1919, Raymond Smullyan is a philosopher and magician as well as a famous mathematician and logician. His career as a stage magician financed his undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago as well as his doctoral work at Princeton. The author of several imaginative books on recreational mathematics, Smullyan is also a classical pianist.

Raymond Smullyan: The Merry Prankster
Raymond Smullyan (1919– ), mathematician, logician, magician, creator of extraordinary puzzles, philosopher, pianist, and man of many parts. The first Dover book by Raymond Smullyan was First-Order Logic (1995). Recent years have brought a number of his magical books of logic and math puzzles: The Lady or the Tiger (2009); Satan, Cantor and Infinity (2009); an original, never-before-published collection, King Arthur in Search of His Dog and Other Curious Puzzles (2010); and Set Theory and the Continuum Problem (with Melvin Fitting, also reprinted by Dover in 2010). More will be coming in subsequent years.

In the Author's Own Words:
"Recently, someone asked me if I believed in astrology. He seemed somewhat puzzled when I explained that the reason I don't is that I'm a Gemini."

"Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements: they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled 'wrong.'" — Raymond Smullyan

Critical Acclaim for The Lady or the Tiger:
"Another scintillating collection of brilliant problems and paradoxes by the most entertaining logician and set theorist who ever lived." — Martin Gardner

Table of Contents

PART I. THE LADY OR THE TIGER?
Chestnuts--Old and New
Ladies or Tigers?
The Asylum of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether
Inspector Craig Visits Transylvania
PART II. PUZZLES AND METAPUZZLES
The Island of Questioners
The Isle of Dreams
Metapuzzles
PART III. THE MYSTERY OF THE MONTE CARLO LOCK
The Mystery of the Monte Carlo Lock
A Curious Number Machine
Craig's Law
Fergusson's Laws
Interlude: Let's Generalize!
The Key
PART IV. SOLVABLE OR UNSOLVABLE?
Fergusson's Logic Machine
Provability and Truth
Machines That Talk About Themselves
Mortal and Immortal Numbers
The Machine That Never Got Built
Leibniz's Dream
About the Author