Algorithmic Puzzles

Algorithmic puzzles are puzzles involving well-defined procedures for solving problems.
This book will provide an enjoyable and accessible introduction to algorithmic puzzles
that will develop the reader's algorithmic thinking.

The first part of this book is a tutorial on algorithm design strategies
and analysis techniques. Algorithm design strategies — exhaustive search,
backtracking, divide-and-conquer and a few others — are general approaches
to designing step-by-step instructions for solving problems. Analysis techniques
are methods for investigating such procedures to answer questions about the ultimate
result of the procedure or how many steps are executed before the procedure stops.
The discussion is an elementary level, with puzzle examples, and requires neither
programming nor mathematics beyond a secondary school level. Thus, the tutorial
provides a gentle and entertaining introduction to main ideas in high-level algorithmic
problem solving.
The second and main part of the book contains 150 puzzles,
from centuries-old classics to newcomers often asked during job interviews at computing,
engineering, and financial companies. The puzzles are divided into three groups
by their difficulty levels. The first fifty puzzles in the Easier Puzzles section
require only middle school mathematics. The sixty puzzle of average difficulty and
forty harder puzzles require just high school mathematics plus a few topics such
as binary numbers and simple recurrences, which are reviewed in the tutorial.