scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1789345
This problem book grew out of the original by Paul Vanderlind published in Swedish in 1996, then translated into English by Loren Larson and subsequently augmented and embellished by Richard Guy (with additional problems from other sources) into the present edition. The book consists of 256 problems of varying difficulty, all of them with solutions, some of them with previous hints, some solutions with questions regarding generalizations and solutions to those questions. There is also a section called \textit{Treasury} where further underlying mathematics, terminology and pointers to literature are given. Let us look into one (rather ancient) problem: We have two buckets which hold 11 and 7 liters respectively. Both buckets are empty but we have unlimited access to water. We can fill either of the buckets from a pump, pour it from one bucket to the other until it is empty or until the other is full, or empty full buckets down the drain. Is it possible to obtain 1 liter of water? Two liters of water? The hint given in the hints section: Denote by (a,b) the pair of 7-liter bucket containing a liters of water and 11-liter bucket containing b liters. Start with (0,0) and after the first step there is either (7,0), or (0,11). Then a solution is given with this idea. Then a question is posed to reformulate the problem as a diophantine equation and the number of solutions is sought. The response then starts with the diophantine equation \(7x+11y=1\). Then the \textit{Treasury} part contains a passage on diophantine equations in general, but could serve as a glossary or an expanded index. The problem books market is somewhat saturated, but this is still a book that is useful. This reviewer has noticed a trend though that this book seems to conform to as well: While the problems seem to be from diverse areas such as plane and spatial geometry, arithmetic, weighing, tournaments, parity, graph theory, number theory or statistics, the underlying nature of the problems seem to be predominantly combinatorial (with some exceptions, such as problem P234 in this book). There are no good old geometric constructions or computational problems or problems with many other underlying mathematical areas. This may be a sociological wittness to generation X's (or is it baby boomer's generation) preferences or tastes in kinds of (pre-college) challenging problems.
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