Mage Merlin's Unsolved Mathematical Mysteries - Satyan Linus Devadoss & Matthew Harvey **

The authors of Mage Merlin's Unsolved Mathematical Mysteries don't seem to quite know who it was written for. The title and the general theming around Arthurian legend pitches it at an audience of children, maybe even young teenagers. However, the content is anything but aimed at that audience.

The book is a collection of unsolved maths problems very loosely fitted to the idea of it being a collection of questions asked of the great wizard Merlin. From such a description, or a flick through the pages, you might think that this is some kind of puzzle book for you to solve, but this isn't the case. Rather, it's a collection of relatively mundane (if esoteric) questions which despite the efforts of hundreds of years of professional mathematics we still haven't solved. With sixteen mysteries in all there is a wide selection of different kinds of problems.

For example the first question is: 'Can you cover a 201x201 meter square using six 100x100 meter squares (without cutting anything up)?' The answer to this and all of the other 'mysteries' the book poses is, 'We don't know.' It might be possible but nobody has managed to figure out a mathematical proof for it. Knowing that this is the case from the start as the book rather take the fun out of reading a new mystery.

In reading this book, it feels like it has no real audience.The Arthurian dressing feels completely perfunctory as anyone that it appeals to would almost certainly have no interest in the underlying mathematics. Additionally if you are somebody to whom such mathematical problems are of great interest the information is generally sparse and it's buried under what is essentially an annoying and unnecessary framing device.

It is worth noting that the images which make up much of the book are well designed and are used effectively to communicate what can be relatively complex puzzles to get your head around.

Overall the book looks great but feels designed for a much younger audience than its content. Whilst it offers simple to understand explanations of a number of well known unsolved mathematics problems, those looking for that kind of thing would likely do much better elsewhere.

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Review by James Lees

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