In The Canterbury Puzzles (1907), Henry Ernest Dudeney sets his problems in Chaucer’s England: the Miller, the Squire, the Wife of Bath and their fellow pilgrims each pose a riddle on the road to Canterbury. Beneath the costume drama are some of Dudeney’s finest inventions, including the celebrated haberdasher’s problem — cutting an equilateral triangle into four pieces that reassemble into a square.
The framing is a delight and the mathematics is serious; several of these puzzles opened genuine lines of geometric research. Download the free EPUB and join the most mathematically gifted pilgrimage ever to leave the Tabard Inn.