Super Strategies for Puzzles and Games

Super Strategies for Puzzles and Games PDF Author: Saul X. Levmore
Publisher: Gramercy
ISBN: 9780517222430
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
For those who want to become better problem solvers--or those who just enjoy games and puzzles that are challenging--this fascinating volume teaches you how to examine each of its many teasers, twisters and tactical challenges and to identify the most winning approach to every one. How can you tell what's a red herring and what's important? How can you figure the odds on Indian poker? How can you flip coins against an opponent and win consistently--without cheating? Here are the clear, easily grasped explanations of how and why some solutions to puzzles work and others don't, and how to tell the difference.

Super Strategies for Puzzles and Games

Super Strategies for Puzzles and Games PDF Author: Saul X. Levmore
Publisher: Gramercy
ISBN: 9780517222430
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 166

Get Book Here

Book Description
For those who want to become better problem solvers--or those who just enjoy games and puzzles that are challenging--this fascinating volume teaches you how to examine each of its many teasers, twisters and tactical challenges and to identify the most winning approach to every one. How can you tell what's a red herring and what's important? How can you figure the odds on Indian poker? How can you flip coins against an opponent and win consistently--without cheating? Here are the clear, easily grasped explanations of how and why some solutions to puzzles work and others don't, and how to tell the difference.

Extreme Sudoku

Extreme Sudoku PDF Author: Carol Vorderman
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307346463
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
Do you know and love Sudoku, the number-placing logic puzzle? Can you breeze through easy puzzles in a matter of minutes, and zip through the harder puzzles, as well? Are you looking for harder and more complex puzzles to keep your attention and take your skill to the next level? Then Extreme Sudoku is the book for you. Inside, international Sudoku expert Carol Vorderman presents 175 tricky puzzles in the classic Sudoku style, and also introduces some fun and challenging new varieties such as Squiffy Sudoku, Sudoku 16, and Killer Sudoku. Each new Sudoku game is even more involved and exciting than the last, but never fear! With Carol's easy-to-understand instructions and step-by-step explanations of each new puzzle format, you'll always succeed, even with the toughest Sudoku puzzles. Includes more than 300 puzzles.

Algorithmic Puzzles

Algorithmic Puzzles PDF Author: Anany Levitin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199876541
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
While many think of algorithms as specific to computer science, at its core algorithmic thinking is defined by the use of analytical logic to solve problems. This logic extends far beyond the realm of computer science and into the wide and entertaining world of puzzles. In Algorithmic Puzzles, Anany and Maria Levitin use many classic brainteasers as well as newer examples from job interviews with major corporations to show readers how to apply analytical thinking to solve puzzles requiring well-defined procedures. The book's unique collection of puzzles is supplemented with carefully developed tutorials on algorithm design strategies and analysis techniques intended to walk the reader step-by-step through the various approaches to algorithmic problem solving. Mastery of these strategies--exhaustive search, backtracking, and divide-and-conquer, among others--will aid the reader in solving not only the puzzles contained in this book, but also others encountered in interviews, puzzle collections, and throughout everyday life. Each of the 150 puzzles contains hints and solutions, along with commentary on the puzzle's origins and solution methods. The only book of its kind, Algorithmic Puzzles houses puzzles for all skill levels. Readers with only middle school mathematics will develop their algorithmic problem-solving skills through puzzles at the elementary level, while seasoned puzzle solvers will enjoy the challenge of thinking through more difficult puzzles.

Mathematical and Algorithmic Puzzles

Mathematical and Algorithmic Puzzles PDF Author: Pramod Ganapathi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
This book presents serious mathematical and algorithmic puzzles that are mostly counterintuitive. The presented puzzles are simultaneously entertaining, challenging, intriguing, and haunting. This book introduces its readers to counterintuitive mathematical ideas and revolutionary algorithmic insights from a wide variety of topics. The presented solutions that are discovered by many mathematicians and computer scientists are highly counterintuitive and show supreme mathematical beauty. These counterintuitive solutions are intriguing to the degree that they shatter our preconceived notions, shake our long-held belief systems, debunk our fundamental intuitions, and finally rob us of sleep and haunt us for a lifetime. Multiple ways of attacking the same puzzle are presented which teach the application of elegant problem-solving strategies.

Grammar Puzzles & Games Kids Can't Resist!

Grammar Puzzles & Games Kids Can't Resist! PDF Author: Karen Kellaher
Publisher: Scholastic
ISBN: 9780439077569
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description
Students will love these cool crosswords, codes, mazes, and more that teach punctuation, capitalization, parts of speech, agreement, sentence structure, and all of the fundamentals.

Krazydad Two Not Touch Volume 1: 360 Star Battle Puzzles to Preserve Your Sanity in These Trying Times

Krazydad Two Not Touch Volume 1: 360 Star Battle Puzzles to Preserve Your Sanity in These Trying Times PDF Author: Jim Bumgardner
Publisher: Krazydad Two Not Touch
ISBN: 9781946855367
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Book Description
From krazydad, constructor of the wildly popular and addictive puzzles published in The New York Times as Two Not Touch, here are 360 of your favorite Star Battle puzzles. These puzzles will provide a healthy diversion for you in these challenging times, and help you make it to the other side with your sanity intact! Includes an instructive and pithy tutorial.

Game Frame

Game Frame PDF Author: Aaron Dignan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451611072
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Ever wonder why teens can spend entire weekends playing video games but struggle with just one hour of homework? Why we’re addicted to certain websites and steal glances at our smartphones under the dinner table? Or why some people are able to find joy in difficult or repetitive jobs while others burn out? It’s not the experiences themselves but the way they’re structured that matters. All our lives we’ve been told that games are distractions—playful pastimes, but unrelated to success. In Game Frame, Aaron Dignan shows us that the opposite is true: games produce peak learning conditions and accelerated achievement. Here, the crucial connection between the games we love to play and the everyday tasks, goals, and dreams we have trouble realizing is illuminated. Aaron Dignan is the thirty-something founder of a successful digital strategy firm that studies the transformative power of technology in culture. He and his peers were raised on a steady diet of games and gadgets, ultimately priming them to challenge the status quo of the modern workplace. What they learned from games goes deeper than hand-eye coordination; instead, this generation intrinsically understands the value of adding the elements of games into everyday life. Game Frame is the first prescriptive explanation of what games mean to us, the human psychology behind their magnetic pull, and how we can use the lessons they teach as a framework to achieve our potential in business and beyond. Games are a powerful way to influence and change behavior in any setting. Here, Dignan outlines why games and play are such important trends in culture today, and how our technology, from our iPhones to our hybrid cars, primes us to be instinctive players. Game Frame tackles the challenging task of defining games and the mechanics that make games work from several perspectives, then explores these ideas through the lens of neuroscience. Finally, Dignan provides practical tips for using basic game mechanics in a variety of settings, such as motivating employees at work or encouraging children at home, giving readers the tools to develop their own games to solve problems in their everyday lives. Illuminated throughout with a series of real-world examples and hypothetical scenarios, Game Frame promises a crash course in game design and behavioral psychology that will leave the reader—and, by extension, the world itself—more productive. Revolutionary, visionary, practical, and time-tested, Game Frame will change the way you approach life.

The Puzzler

The Puzzler PDF Author: A.J. Jacobs
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0593136721
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
The New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically goes on a rollicking journey to understand the enduring power of puzzles: why we love them, what they do to our brains, and how they can improve our world. “Even though I’ve never attempted the New York Times crossword puzzle or solved the Rubik’s Cube, I couldn’t put down The Puzzler.”—Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project and Better Than Before Look for the author’s new podcast, The Puzzler, based on this book! What makes puzzles—jigsaws, mazes, riddles, sudokus—so satisfying? Be it the formation of new cerebral pathways, their close link to insight and humor, or their community-building properties, they’re among the fundamental elements that make us human. Convinced that puzzles have made him a better person, A.J. Jacobs—four-time New York Times bestselling author, master of immersion journalism, and nightly crossworder—set out to determine their myriad benefits. And maybe, in the process, solve the puzzle of our very existence. Well, almost. In The Puzzler, Jacobs meets the most zealous devotees, enters (sometimes with his family in tow) any puzzle competition that will have him, unpacks the history of the most popular puzzles, and aims to solve the most impossible head-scratchers, from a mutant Rubik’s Cube, to the hardest corn maze in America, to the most sadistic jigsaw. Chock-full of unforgettable adventures and original examples from around the world—including new work by Greg Pliska, one of America’s top puzzle-makers, and a hidden, super-challenging but solvable puzzle—The Puzzler will open readers’ eyes to the power of flexible thinking and concentration. Whether you’re puzzle obsessed or puzzle hesitant, you’ll walk away with real problem-solving strategies and pathways toward becoming a better thinker and decision maker—for these are certainly puzzling times.

Fair Division

Fair Division PDF Author: Steven J. Brams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521556446
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Cutting a cake, dividing up the property in an estate, determining the borders in an international dispute - such problems of fair division are ubiquitous. Fair Division treats all these problems and many more through a rigorous analysis of a variety of procedures for allocating goods (or 'bads' like chores), or deciding who wins on what issues, when there are disputes. Starting with an analysis of the well-known cake-cutting procedure, 'I cut, you choose', the authors show how it has been adapted in a number of fields and then analyze fair-division procedures applicable to situations in which there are more than two parties, or there is more than one good to be divided. In particular they focus on procedures which provide 'envy-free' allocations, in which everybody thinks he or she has received the largest portion and hence does not envy anybody else. They also discuss the fairness of different auction and election procedures.

Seven Games: A Human History

Seven Games: A Human History PDF Author: Oliver Roeder
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324003782
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice "Beguiling, mesmerizing, and utterly charming." —Stefan Fatsis, author of Word Freak A group biography of seven enduring and beloved games, and the story of why—and how—we play them. Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last Go champion of imperial Japan, defending tradition against “modern rationalism”; and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white Go stones. Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language itself. Throughout, Roeder tells the compelling story of how humans, pursuing scientific glory and competitive advantage, have invented AI programs better than any human player, and what that means for the games—and for us. Funny, fascinating, and profound, Seven Games is a story of obsession, psychology, history, and how play makes us human.