The Puzzling Pearls

A dazzling, whip-smart mystery series about two very different girls and a whole heap of danger … Hannah Plum loves fashion, fun, and junk food. Patti Woo is obsessed with detective novels, lives in leggings, and is definitely not Hannah’s friend. But the two girls are stuck at the beachside Heartbreak Hotel together while Hannah’s dad and Patti’s mum are out birdwatching and – yuck! – falling in love. When a hotel guest’s beautiful pink wedding dress is stolen, Hannah is determined to get to the bottom of it. With a reluctant Patti in tow, the two girls are launched into an ever-deepening mystery. Why is a wedding planner sending secret signals to an unknown guest? Who’s leaving creepy wet diving relics in the hotel rooms? And could some long-lost, famous pink pearls be at the heart of it all? If Plum and Woo want to survive the summer, they’ll need to solve this mystery in style. But first, they’ll have to survive each other … In every Plum & Woo instalment, Hannah and Patti will investigate a surprising and sinister fashion mystery while also navigating their newly blending family. Brimming with fun, danger and highly relatable tween angst, this series is perfect for 9+!

Welcome to The Little Book of Secret Code Puzzles. If you've never solved a code puzzle before, or never even heard of a Code Puzzle, you're holding a book in your hands that will bring you a lot of amusement and insight. Some readers, especially those who are experienced puzzle solvers, might say these puzzles are very easy. And they are designed to be easy! But people who have never solved a code puzzle before will delight in learning a new skill, after which they'll find that each puzzle they decode will bring them a thought that will humor, encourage, or challenge them. Each two-page spread contains both a puzzle and a quotation, and each two-page spread of puzzle and quote is related in its sentiment. The quotes come from people who have lived all over the world, and from all ages of history, and each quote gives a clue to help solve the puzzle it accompanies on the opposite page. Some of the puzzles are intended to be a bit humorous, but each contains a little pearl of wisdom that I describe as just waiting to be discovered.

A lost feminist classic — and winner of the Toronto Book Award — reissued to coincide with the 35th anniversary of publication. In her yearning, elusive search for a lover, Shirley Kaszenbowski sheds her drab “basic black” existence together with torturous memories of guilt and loss as a Jewish immigrant in Toronto. Shirley Kaszenbowski, née Silverberg, is a middle-aged, middle-class woman in a Holt Renfrew tweed coat, a basic black dress, and a strand of real pearls. She may seem ordinary enough, pricing silk scarves at Eaton’s or idling in hotel coffee shops, but in fact she is searching for her lover. He is an elusive figure, a man connected with “The Agency,” a powerful technocrat who may or may not have suggested a rendezvous based on a secret code in the National Geographic. Her search takes her to the world of her past as a Jewish immigrant in the Spadina-Dundas area of Toronto. She finds the bakeries and rooming houses of her youth still haunted by survivors of postwar Europe and by her own memories of guilt and loss, while the consolations of art, opera, and pornography offer only echoes of her own illusions and desires. Her strange, wryly funny odyssey ends in a dramatic confrontation scene with her husband and “the other woman,” as she trades in her basic black for another chance. In Basic Black with Pearls, Weinzweig displays her gift for creating sympathetic characters in a slightly surreal, but always recognizable world.

This book convenes a selection of 200 mathematical puzzles with original solutions, all celebrating the inquisitive and inspiring spirit of Nobuyuki “Nob” Yoshigahara – a legend in the worldwide community of mathematical and mechanical puzzles. A graduate from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yoshigahara invented numerous mechanical puzzles and published over 80 puzzle books. In 2003, he was honored with the Sam Loyd Award, given by the Association for Games & Puzzles International to individuals who have been made a significant contribution to the world of mechanical puzzles. In this work, the reader will find some of the most ingenious puzzles ever created, organized in ten categories: Logic, matchstick, maze, algorithmic, combinatorial, digital, number, geometric, dissection, and others. Some of them could rivalry with those found at Mathematical Olympiads tests around the globe; others will work as powerful brain teasers for those with an interest in problem-solving. Math teachers, curious students of any age and even experienced mathematicians with a taste for the fun in science can find in this book unconventional paths to develop their problem-solving skills in a creative way.

We are living in puzzling's golden age right now." --Will Shortz, New York Times A colossal assortment of the six most popular Japanese puzzles--Sudoku, Sodoku X, Kakuro, Masyu, Hitori, and Nurikabe--ranging in difficulty from gentle to diabolical. A collection of four hundred puzzles-six different types of mind-bending games-ranging in difficulty levels so that players of every level will be challenged. Features include a complete answer key along with short, illustrated tutorials for each game-which proves particularly useful for the less familiar challenges, including: * Hitori: The ultimate logic teaser. Begin with a complete Sudoku grid and the object is to "paint" out blocks so that no number appears twice in any row or column. * Masyu: A charming but sophisticated invention where you are required to "string" black-and-white "pearls" with a series of vertical and horizontal lines that form a continuous loop. * Nurikabe: Beginning with a grid of squares scattered with numbers seemingly placed at random, the idea is to paint the black squares to make walls, leaving patches of white behind.

It all begins on the night of the Poo-yang dragonboat races in 699 A.D.: a drummer in the leading boat collapses, and the body of a beautiful young woman turns up in a deserted country mansion. There, Judge Dee—tribunal magistrate, inquisitor, and public avenger—steps in to investigate the murders and return order to the Tang Dynasty. In The Emperor’s Pearl, the judge discovers that these two deaths are connected by an ancient tragedy involving a near-legendary treasure stolen from the Imperial Harem one hundred years earlier. The terrifying figure of the White Lady, a river goddess enshrined on a bloodstained altar, looms in the background of the investigation. Clues are few and elusive, but under the expert hand of Robert van Gulik, this mythic jigsaw puzzle assembles itself into a taut mystery. “If you have not yet discovered Judge Dee and his faithful Sgt. Hoong, I envy you that initial pleasure which comes from the discovery of a great detective story. For the magistrate of Poo-yang belongs in that select group of fictional detectives headed by the renowned Sherlock Holmes.”—Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times “The title of this book and the book itself have much in common. Each is a jewel, a rare and precious find.”—Atlanta Times

Richard Bird takes a radical approach to algorithm design, namely, design by calculation. These 30 short chapters each deal with a particular programming problem drawn from sources as diverse as games and puzzles, intriguing combinatorial tasks, and more familiar areas such as data compression and string matching. Each pearl starts with the statement of the problem expressed using the functional programming language Haskell, a powerful yet succinct language for capturing algorithmic ideas clearly and simply. The novel aspect of the book is that each solution is calculated from an initial formulation of the problem in Haskell by appealing to the laws of functional programming. Pearls of Functional Algorithm Design will appeal to the aspiring functional programmer, students and teachers interested in the principles of algorithm design, and anyone seeking to master the techniques of reasoning about programs in an equational style.