A Tangled Tale

Lewis Carroll wrote these ten linked stories, which he called Knots, for a Victorian magazine between 1880 and 1885. Each one hides a mathematical puzzle inside a comic little drama: knights bickering over how far they have walked, a stern aunt sparring with her quick-witted niece, muddled professors, and travelers who cannot quite work out their sums. Readers were invited to send in answers, and Carroll later printed the solutions with gentle, funny commentary on where people had gone wrong. The result is part brain-teaser, part parody of the fussy word problems of his day, all carried by the same nonsense logic that runs through Alice. You can download the full book free as a PDF and EPUB edition.