The Big Book of Baseball Brainteasers, by Dom Forker, Robert Obojski, Wayne Stewart

On the surface baseball looks fairly simple, but read a couple of pages from anywhere in this book and you’ll quickly find a lot more to it than expected. The different chapters focus on various parts of the game: the infield, the outfield, base runners, umps, and so on. There is a mix of anecdotes, trivia, and puzzlers which illustrate different rules and situations. Well organized, even if not well written!

The style of writing made several of the puzzles quite difficult to follow. Instead of a straightforward layout of a siuation (“Runners on first and third with one out”) we plow through prose like, “The Cardinals have one out, Vince Coleman on third base, Willie McGee on first base, and a rookie who is trying to make the St. Louis ball club at the plate.” While that imagery is great when listening to a game on the radio, it sucks when the idea is to figure out the proper call when a base running error occurs.

That said, I learned a lot from this book. For instance, if a thrown glove makes contact with a live ball, the play is ruled a triple. If a fence is closer than 250 feet from home plate, a ball hit over it is a double and not a home run. If a batted ball strikes an umpire in fair territory before touching a fielder, the ball is dead; however, if it strikes an ump after passing a fielder other than the pitcher, it is considered fair. Great stuff!

First Sentence:

Some people claim that umpires give certain players the benefit of the doubt: Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, for example, Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn, too.

How Would You Move Mount Fuji? by William Poundstone

A friend lent me this and I found it fascinating! It is both a brief history of the puzzle interview and a collection of brainteasers—and their answers, thank god! A puzzle interview is one where the candidate is asked questions such as, “Why are manhole covers round?” and the titular, “How would you move Mount Fuji?” Some of these don’t necessarily have a correct answer: “Design a spice rack for a blind person;” and some do: “How many gas stations are there in the United States?” All give not only the answer (where one exists) but the techniques to use for solving them. Very enlightening.

This is a really quick read, unless you try and solve all the puzzles! I’m embarrassed to say I only got about half of them right. Pick this up and see how you do!

First Sentence:

In August 1957 William Shockley was recruiting staff for his Palo Alto, California, start-up, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory.

Java Puzzlers, by Joshua Bloch and Neal Gafter

Early last week I came home and discovered a heavy envelope from FedEx waiting for me. I opened it and found a book—Java Puzzlers. To say I was surprised would be an understatement, as I hadn’t ordered it and in fact had never heard of it. Tucked inside the front cover was a note from the publisher saying the book had been sent with the compliments of the authors for my help on the project. My help? What help? The light finally went on when I found my name in the acknowledgements crediting me with puzzle 59. Back in 2002 I attended JavaOne (with Alex and Matt) and went to a great session about Java brainteasers. At its close, Bloch invited the audience to send in other puzzles for future talks; I sent him a couple. He used one of my ideas, and three years later he not only remembered this but sent me a gratis copy! Great guy, that Joshua Bloch!

I’ve always been interested in the trivia and minutiae around software technologies, and this book doesn’t disappoint. It is filled with tricks and obfuscations that can be found within the Java programming language. Things like, “When is i != i true?” [Click for answerWhen i == Double.NaN] I always learn more about how a language really works from something like this instead of a more traditional guide; it makes me think more and I seem to retain the knowledge longer. Even better, along with the soution is a lesson describing how to avoid the pitfall in your everyday coding. Good stuff.

Besides the puzzles themselves, a lot of thought went into this publication. There are optical illusions between each quandary, reflecting the misdirection that is the theme of the book. The title of each puzzle has an amusing name, many of which include hints as to the nature of the trick as well (my favorite: It’s Absurd, It’s a Pain, It’s Superclass!). Also, the layout is designed so that a puzzle always ends on the bottom of a right-facing page and so the answer is hidden from view reducing the temptation to cheat. Smart.

First Sentence:

This book is filled with brainteasers about the Java programming language and its core libraries.