The Universe in a Handkerchief

by Martin Gardner

s/t: Lewis Carroll's Mathematical Recreations, Games, Puzzles, and Word Plays
"Lewis Carroll was endlessly fascinated with puzzles of one sort or another his entire life. As a boy, he once traced out in the snow "a maze of such hopeless intricacy as almost to put its famous rival at Hampton Court in the shade."" Carroll's appeal is also universal, from the young to the old, from game enthusiasts to professional mathematicians. Martin Gardner brings together the most interesting of Lewis Carroll's games and puzzles, some in verse, others discovered in diaries and letters, for the enjoyment of everyone for generations to come.

Genres: Nonfiction, Mathematics, Puzzles, Science, Games, Stem, Classics

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll), philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion. He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981, and published over 70 books.

Reviews

[Jim Razinha]

A bit drier than Gardner’s other writings, this is more of a recount of Carroll’s books, letters and notes focusing on games and mathematical recreations than Gardner’s usual, insightful analyses, but it is one I had not read yet.

Gardner said of his Annotated Alice: “It occurred to me some 35 years ago that it was impossible for an American reader today, so far removed from Victorian England in both time and space, to appreciate fully the hundreds of hidden jokes in the Alice books without the aid of footnotes.”

And predating Douglas Adam’s and the 42 tropeAs we shall see, 42 had for Carroll some sort of special significance. […] Carroll was […] of Tuesdays, and of the number 42. When the Baker (Fit 1) comes aboard the ship, he leaves on the beach 42 carefully packed boxes with his name "painted clearly on each." According to the third Fit, stanza five, the Baker is in his early forties. It has been suggested that the Baker represents Carroll himself, who was 42 when he began writing the ballad. The 42 boxes are the 42 years he left behind when his imagination joined the ship's crew. A Rule 42 is cited in the book's Preface. In the first Alice book, during the farcical trial of the Knave of Hearts, the King invokes Rule 42. The number enters Carroll's writing in many other places, but no one knows just why.

Gardner always amazed me with his access to so much material that was not generally available (especially pre-Internet)… I thought one share interesting: “How does a doll know that a hand which came off was her right hand? Because the other hand was left. (I failed to note in which letter I came across this.)” A admission of a rare non-documentation on the part of Gardner.

[Rod Innis]

I was not sure if I should give this book 2 or 3 stars. I settled on 3 but am not certain that the book deserves them. It has some very interesting facts about Lewis Carroll and I did enjoy reading about Carroll. But there were many examples of his math and word games which were at times very boring.
To understand much of these would have taken a lot more time than I was willing to devote.

Lewis Carroll(whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was certainly a complex person. He was much more than the author of a couple of popular children's books. Even those books are much more complex than most people realize.

[Jo Dunn]

Lewis Carroll was a teacher, a (recreational) mathematician, and a spell-binding storyteller, but you wouldn't know it from this book. If you want to know which other books to read to find out about Carroll's mathematical hijinks, this is the book for you. If you want to be spell-bound by the literary skills of a quasi-biographer, go find something else.

[Fen]

I've been wanting to read this book for ages... and have even had a copy (given to me by some friends as a gift) sitting on my Teetering Pile for a few years, so I figured it would be good one to read for my choice of a book published in 1994 that I had never read before. I've given it two stars, but sort of wish I could give it two and a half. It's a difficult book to review, to be honest... at first, it almost seemed like I was reading someone's academic dissertation, but eventually decided it was a bit more like reading an annotated bibliography of papers and books written by and about Lewis Carroll (the author also wrote The Annotated Alice (which is well worth reading and works a bit better with the format)). At times there were so many references crammed into a paragraph that it became difficult to follow what the author was trying to say. On the other hand, I did learn some fascinating things about Lewis Carroll and his penchant for word and math puzzles.

[Eleni]

As the subtitle to the work suggests -- Lewis Carroll's Mathematical Recreations, Games, Puzzles, and Word Plays -- this book provides an overview of the kinds of ideas Carroll had that he wrote in his diary or in letters, published in journals and magazines, or debated with others. Having played doublets as a child (for example, change BREAD to FLOUR changing one letter at a time), it was intersting to note these were Carroll's invention and to see other games and puzzles and puns he created, enjoyed, and shared.

[Raymonds009]

Lots of fun with Lewis Carroll's puzzles and games.

[Shayla]

More of an annotated bibliography of places where you can find Carroll's puzzles, poems, etc., Gardner's prose is dry and frustratingly short on both examples and explanations. The book does improve at the end with several descriptions of games--Doublets, Mischmasch, and Syzygies, particularly--that are both interesting and easily playable whereas many of Carroll's other games are rather convoluted.
If you want to find a comprehensive guide to where to find Carroll's various, uh, thinkery, this is the book for you. If you just want to read about it, perhaps use this book as a guide to find something better.

[James]

The important thing to realize about this book is that it is only a sliver of all the scholarship on Carroll's recreational mathematics and puzzle-making. The book acknowledges this, even, referencing earlier, more comprehensive works often. While I was really impressed and entertained with some of the riddles, ciphers, syllogisms, etc., Carroll came up with, the book covered the few topics included in too much depth. For as much cool, clever stuff Carroll produced, there's a good deal of lame or impenetrable stuff, too, and I would have like less of this.

[Robu-sensei]

I did learn, from reading this book, about some Lewis Carroll works I'd like to read in full, but overall Martin Gardner—for the first time ever—let me down. Or perhaps it was Carroll himself, by means of a 120-year language gap. The instructions for many of the games and puzzles described here are incomprehensible to the modern reader unschooled in Victorian English. This book has, however, piqued my interest in late-19th-century British society. Some of the wildly popular parlor games that Carroll devised sound difficult even for the MENSA crowd of today.

[Jeff Yoak]

This book is a delight, full of interesting math and puzzles.