The lady or the tiger?

What Hacker News says

1. bediger4000Aug 2024
   The Raymond Smullyan puzzle books might work.

   I think the first part of The Lady or the Tiger might be fun.

   To Mock A Mockingbird might work too, but the initial learning curve might be too steep. The Island of Knights and Knaves part could work.

   Satan, Cantor and Infinity has some good parts, too.

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2. surprisetalkNov 2023
   Andy Weir's The Egg is another excellent short story:

   [1] http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

   If you're looking for more short stories, I highly recommend the following:

   • Ted Chiang's Exhalation

   • Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life and Others

   • Ken Liu's Paper Menagerie

   • Borges's Ficciones

   • Smullyan's What is the Name of This Book?

   • Smullyan's Lady or the Tiger?

   • Douglas Adams's God's Debris

   Remember to support local booksellers when possible :)

   [2] https://bookshop.org

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3. abecedariusSep 2022
   Try Raymond Smullyan. He has books at a range of levels of accessibility; I'm not sure if there's anything great for your 8th grader, but I remember first getting into The Lady or the Tiger? as a teen.
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4. pjungwirJul 2020
   I second this! Gardner would be something more recreational and fun than a lot else out there. The Colossal Book of Mathematics is a good way to get a lot in one place. The Night is Large is also great but less math-focused.

   I don't see any recommendations for Smullyan yet. The Lady or the Tiger is the classic I think, but I really loved Forever Undecided.

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5. conistonwaterFeb 2017
   I loved the puzzle books, even though I wasn't very good at the puzzles. The titbit about his wife is this story (https://magazine.uchicago.edu/9506/June95BOBProfiles.html, NYT left out the actual puzzle)

   > Smullyan admits the following puzzle might have come in handy had he designed it before meeting his wife.

   > "I'll make a statement. If the statement is true, you give me your autograph. It doesn't have to be on a check, it can be on a blank piece of paper. If the statement is false, you don't give me your autograph," Smullyan sets up the puzzle. "Well, my statement is, `You will give me neither your autograph nor a kiss.'

   And his puzzles always came with variations, like this (http://blog.tanyakhovanova.com/2010/05/raymond-smullyans-mag...):

   > Afterwards, Raymond Smullyan joined me in the elevator. “Do you want to see a magic trick?” he asked. “I bet I can kiss you without touching you.” I was caught off guard. At that moment I believed anything was possible. I agreed to the bet.

   > He asked me to close my eyes, kissed me on the cheek and laughed, “I lost.”

   And this bit from the preface to The Lady or the Tiger aptly summarizes most people's attitude towards maths:

   > Before he called the boy to the phone, the father said to me in soft conspiratorial tones: "He is reading your book and loves it! But when you speak to him, don't let him know that what he is doing is math, because he hates math! If he had any idea that this is really math, he would stop reading the book immediately!"

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6. jballancFeb 2017
   "The Lady or the Tiger" is, quite literally, probably the single most influential book from my childhood. In 6th grade, my math teacher had a copy in his classroom. He noticed that I spent so much time before class, after class, (during class) reading it, that at the end of the school year he told me I could take it home so long as I promised to bring it back at the end of the summer. (He was also the 7th and 8th grade math teacher.)

   I took that book home and treasured it for the whole summer, pouring over each puzzle, solving each one without peeking at the answers, then comparing my answers to the ones in the back of the book. By the end of the summer I think there were only 1 or 2 I hadn't been able to work out myself. Sure enough, as the first day of 7th grade rolled around, it was in my backpack and promptly returned to the shelf of my math teacher's classroom. Satisfied that I had gotten all I could from "The Lady or the Tiger", I next turned my attention to the Apple IIe he had sitting in the corner and a book entitled "Apple Basic".

   The rest, as they say, is history.

   One final note...as I continued through school and university, I gradually came to realize that Taoism was the school of philosophy that matched most closely to how I understood the world and is, in some sense, the closest thing I have to a "religion". It wasn't until much later in life (well after I turned 30), that I happened to stumble back across Smullyan and his writings, only to discover that he was also a rather adroit Taoist philosopher. (His "Is God a Taoist?" essay, http://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/godTao... is highly recommended.)

   To this day I wonder if "The Lady or the Tiger" didn't have more of an impact on my early development than simply fostering a love of logic...

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