Can You Solve My Problems?: A casebook of ingenious, perplexing and totally satisfying puzzles

Are you smarter than a Singaporean ten-year-old?

Can you beat Sherlock Holmes?

If you think the answer is yes - I challenge you to solve my problems.

Here are 125 of the world's best brainteasers from the last two millennia, taking us from ancient China to medieval Europe, Victorian England to modern-day Japan, with stories of espionage, mathematical breakthroughs and puzzling rivalries along the way.

Pit your wits against logic puzzles and kinship riddles, pangrams and river-crossing conundrums. Some solutions rely on a touch of cunning, others call for creativity, others need mercilessly logical thought. Some can only be solved be 2 per cent of the population. All are guaranteed to sharpen your mind. Let's get puzzling!

A journalist, author and mathematician, Alex Bellos was, for a time, the Guardian’s South American correspondent during which time he wrote Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life. Since returning to the UK he’s concentrated on writing about maths and science, writing the bestselling popular science books Alex’s Adventures in Numberland, Alex Through the Looking Glass, Can You Solve My Problems and the forthcoming Puzzle Ninja. He is also the author of a football series for children, Football School Season.