Seasoned with Gardner's interest in the history and philosophy of science, this delightful book is a treasure-trove of puzzles, anecdotes, games, and logical theory. These intriguing problems, collected from Gardner's Scientific American columns, involve knots, interlocking rings, rotations and reflections, logical paradox, two-dimensional universes, chess strategies, and gambling odds. ''Gardner conjures problems that are both profound and silly; exquisite truths and outrageous absurdities; paradoxes, anagrams, palindromes and party tricks. . . . He knows, better than most, how many amazing true things there are in the world.''— Newsweek