Reddit reviews My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles (Dover Recreational Math)

could try: gardner and moscow. But I'm not sure if thats what you're looking for.

You could pick up the PE study book for your subject.

Have you heard of Project Euler

My favorite example of this comes from Martin Gardner's book My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles. The problem is known as the Hole in the Sphere.

>This is an incredible problem--incredible because it seems to lack sufficient data for a solution. A cylindrical hole six inches long has been drilled straight through the center of a solid sphere. What is the volume remaining in the sphere?

will make the deadline, one sec!

edit:
Sorry I'm an ass =)

I even copied the hand signal for extra proof!

linky

I'm gonna second the recommendation for mathematics. In particular, I'd check out My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles written by that great mathematical puzzle maker, Martin Gardner. You can get the book new for about $1.50 on Amazon, and it's sure to challenge you to think laterally.


If your interested in actually studying some mathematics, I'd recommend combinatorics as a branch of math that is very problem-oriented and that requires much lateral thinking.

A few notable resources I think are Martin Gardner's puzzle books (example linked), XKCD's puzzle wiki and forum, Math SE (pick your field), project euler; personally I quite like exchanging puzzles with friends and family, or just thinking about interesting/challenging questions loosely related to my fields of study such as this (I'm not Did).

The fun about puzzles is they often require only elementary math, but also often theories will give you ideas or let you find a solution much more quickly (great motivator for learning theories!)

If you have a good problem or puzzle in mind, it is impossible to be bored or idle -- you have the company of your challenge at any time :)

(p.s. try not to nerd snipe yourself :) )