An imaginative collection of pieces created in tribute to Martin Gardner. Best known for his "Mathematical Games" column in "Scientific American", Gardner used his fascination with puzzles and magic to entice readers into a world of mathematical discovery.

Foreword /Elwyn Berlekamp and Tom Rodgers -- I personal Magic -- Martin Gardner: A “Documentary” /Dana Richards -- Ambrose, Gardner, and Doyle /Raymond Smullyan -- A Truth Learned Early /Carl Pomerance -- Martin Gardner = Mint! Grand! Rare! /Jeremiah Farrell -- Three Limericks: On Space, Time, and Speed /Tim Rowett -- II puzzlers -- A Maze with Rules /Robert Abbott -- Biblical Ladders /Donald E. Knuth -- Card Game Trivia /Stewart Tunic -- Creative Puzzle Thinking /Nob Yoshigahara -- Number Play, Calculators, and Card Tricks: Mathemagical Black Holes /Michael W. Ecker -- Puzzles from Around the World /Richard I Hess -- O’Beirne's Hexiamond /Richard K. Guy -- Japanese Tangram (The Sei Shonagon Pieces) /Shigeo Takagi -- How a Tangram Cat Happily Turns into the Pink Panther /Bernhard Wiezorke -- Polly’s Flagstones /Stewart Coffin -- Those Peripatetic Pentominoes /Kate Jones -- Self-Designing Tetraflexagons /Robert E. Neale -- The Odyssey of the Figure Eight Puzzle /Stewart Coffin -- Metagrobolizers of Wire /Rick Irby -- Beautiful but Wrong: The Floating Hourglass Puzzle /Scot Morns -- Cube Puzzles /Jeremiah Farrell -- The Nine Color Puzzle /Sivy Fahn -- Twice: A Sliding Block Puzzle /Edward Hordern -- Planar Burrs /M. Oskar van Deventer -- Block-Packing Jambalaya /Bill Cutler -- Classification of Mechanical Puzzles and Physical Objects Related to Puzzles /James Dalgety and Edward Hordern -- 111 Mathgmagies -- A Curious Paradox /Raymond Smullyan -- A Powerful Procedure for Proving Practical Propositions /Solomon W. Golomb -- Misfiring Tasks /Ken Knowlton -- Drawing de Bruijn Graphs /Herbert Taylor -- Computer Analysis of Sprouts /David Applegate, Guy Jacobson, and Daniel Sleator -- Strange New Life Forms: Update /Bill Gosper -- Hollow Mazes /M. Oskai' van Deventer -- Some Diophantine Recreations /David Singmaster -- Who Wins Misere Hex? /Jeffrey Lagarias and Daniel Sleator -- An Update on Odd Neighbors and Odd Neighborhoods /Leslie E. Shader -- Point Mirror Reflection /M. Oskar van Deventer -- How Random Are 3x + 1 Function Iterates? /Jeffrey C. Laganas.

Even well-known puzzles retain their power, as was made clear again and again last month at the seventh "Gathering for Gardner." These conferences of mathematicians, puzzlers, game-players and magicians at the Ritz-Carlton here began as personal tributes to Martin Gardner, Scientific American's legendary Mathematical Games columnist, and now take place without the master's presence (he is 91). During four days of talks and tricks, the oldest puzzles mixed freely with the newest. -- Edward Rothstein, TheNew York Times , April 2006