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One hundred prisoners and a light bulb
Ditmarsch H., Kooi B., Copernicus, New York, NY, 2015. 188 pp. Type: Book (978-3-319166-93-3)
Date Reviewed: Oct 13 2015

As perhaps hinted by the provocative title, this slim text is an entertaining run through 11 classical logic problems that can easily surprise the reader in both presentation and solutions. Multiple sub-puzzles emerge along with entrancing illustrations by a Tamil-based Indian colleague. One of the authors has previously edited a broadly based volume on the subject [1].

Each of the first 11 chapters uses a classic logic problem as the focus. Some may be familiar to fans of logic puzzles. They include: hangman, muddy children, Monty Hall, Russian cards, sum and product, two envelopes, gossip, and cluedo. Most include variants on the classics (and it may be that the reader knows only of a variant), along with a solution and an informative history of the problem. Good references are included at each step along the way. Answers to all puzzles are provided in a final chapter, although they are logic rather than programming solutions. There is no index; however, there is a good bibliography.

Chapter 12 is an “overview of dynamic epistemic logic”; as a non-expert, I found it both informative and hard to integrate into my thinking. It is either perhaps too brief or lacks some more practical implementation aspects that would make it more concrete to the computer scientist. And this points to the one drawback of the book for a computer science audience: there are neither demonstrated programmatic solutions, nor, more to the point, are there pointers to such. For that, one would have to consult other texts that are more academic oriented [2,3] or practice oriented.

Reviewer:  David Bellin Review #: CR143850 (1512-0993)
1) van Ditmarsch, H.; van der Hoek, W. Dynamic epistemic logic. Springer, New York, NY, 2007.
2) Baltag, A.; Smets, S. Johan van Benthem on logic and information dynamics. Springer, New York, NY, 2014.
3) Pudlák, P. Logical foundations of mathematics and computational complexity: a gentle introduction. Springer, New York, NY, 2013.
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