📚 Mathematical Recreations

Puzzles, games and odd numbers done seriously: the Gardner tradition, where amusement and research trade places.

Below are the 30 works carrying the subject mathematical recreations in the Open Library catalogue with the most editions in print. Author and first year are as the record states them; a missing year means the record does not carry one, not that the book is undated. Novels set in the subject are left out, because a list of historical fiction is not a list of history. Where one author dominates the reprint counts, no more than two of their titles appear.

Cover	Title	Author	First published	Editions
	Mathematical recreations and problems of past and present times	W. W. Rouse Ball	1892	102
	The Game of Logic	Lewis Carroll	1886	60
	O homem que calculava	Malba Tahan	1993	30
	Mathematics and the Imagination	Edward Kasner	1940	29
	Kalejdoskop matematyczny	Hugo Steinhaus	1938	27
	Mathematician's delight	W. W. Sawyer	1943	27
	The Enjoyment of Mathematics	Hans Rademacher	1930	26
	The Gentle Art of Mathematics	Daniel Pedoe	1958	21
	The Canterbury puzzles	Henry Ernest Dudeney	1907	20
	The Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles & Diversions	Martin Gardner	1959	18
	Amusements in mathematics	Henry Ernest Dudeney	1917	17
	The 2nd Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles & Diversions	Martin Gardner	1961	17
	The Moscow Puzzles	B. A. Kordemskiĭ	1959	16
	La mathématique des jeux, ou Récréations mathématiques	Maurice Kraitchik	1930	13
	101 brain puzzlers	Eric Revell Emmet	1967	13
	Figuring	Shakuntala Devi	1977	13
	Experiments in topology	Stephen Barr	1964	11
	Mathematical Puzzles	Peter Winkler	2003	11
	Vidam matematika	Clara Lukács	1968	10
	Alex's Adventures In Numberland	Alex Bellos	2010	10
	The Mathematical Gardner	David A. Klarner	1980	9
	Satan, cantor, and infinity	Raymond M. Smullyan	1992	9
	Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi	Cindy Neuschwander	1999	9
	Mathematical Puzzles	Anthony S. Filipiak	1942	8
	Puzzle-math	George Gamow	1957	8
	Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays, 2nd Edition, Volume 1	Elwyn R. Berlekamp	1985	8
	Across the Board	John J. Watkins	2004	8
	Mathematics in fun and in earnest	Nathan Altshiller-Court	1935	7
	Mathematical bafflers	Angela Dunn	1964	7
	Mathematics on vacation	Joseph S. Madachy	1966	7

List built from Open Library (CC0 metadata) · retrieved 05 Nov 2026 UTC · capped at 30 works per subject.

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Want the ideas behind these books explained rather than listed? Try Study for short explainers, Academy for deeper tracks, and the periodic table or the night sky when the book is about matter or stars.