The Greatest Puzzles Ever Solved

I’ve finally managed to get my hands on a printed copy of my most recent book, The Greatest Puzzles Ever Solved. Getting hold of a finished copy of something you wrote is always a great buzz, even if the end result is disappointing. I love books as physical artifacts, I always have, and part of the reason I love writing so much is that it feels like an amazing privilege to know that one of them is actually mine.

As is often the case, all delight aside, I’m a little surprised by this book. For only the second time ever, the surprise is pleasant. The book is a hard-back, which I didn’t expect, with an unusual padded cover. The cover illustration is a bit random, but that’s par for the course. The text has made it through editing without any significant mangling. The illustrations have been nicely coloured, and the page textures are reasonably sympathetic, both of which are pleasant bonuses. The only real negative is that the publisher took my name off the cover for the UK version, which is a bit offensive. Still, all in all, I’m very pleased.

The Greatest Puzzles Ever Solved, by Tim Dedopulos

The book is a selection of the most historically significant, scientifically important and/or culturally interesting puzzles ever produced. This includes deliberate recreational puzzles like Crosswords and Sudoku to philosophical dilemmas, riddles, and mathematical problems. They range from very easy to insanely hard, although obviously the vast majority are, I hope, entertainingly challenging. I’ve done my best to give proper context for all the puzzles, so that their importance is clear, and to explain how the answers are found. I always get annoyed by complicated puzzles where the answer just says “23″ or whatever. In other words, I’ve done my best to do a good job, and it’s nice that the book itself is a decent physical thing.

In the interests of full disclosure, it is important that I point out that I’m not getting any royalties for this book *sigh*. So if you go and buy a copy, I’ll never even hear about it, let alone get any money from it. So, please, only buy this book if it actually sounds like you might enjoy it…!

(Yes, that is one of my infamous table runners in the picture.)