Pradeep Mutalik

Readers rescued a Star Trek crew from a probabilistic predicament armed only with the power of mathematical reasoning.

In honor of the actor and activist Nichelle Nichols, this month’s puzzle imagines a Star Trek adventure in which her character, Lieutenant Uhura, faces a life-and-death conundrum.

Readers balanced logical reasoning and mathematical insights to find phony coins with a double-pan balance scale.

In recreational mathematics, the balance scale is an endless source of puzzles that require precise and elaborate logic and teach the fundamentals of generalization.

Four puzzle solutions reveal different ways to divine someone’s hidden number with impossibly little information.

Mathematical magic can seem like mind reading. Your job is to reveal the secret behind these four tricks.

Learn the magic and math of how to win games when your opponent goes first.

How to win games by going second and leaving your opponent with no good options.

The solution to our puzzle about Euler’s number explains why e pops up in situations that involve optimality.