Derrick Niederman is the author of Number Freak: From 1 to 200—The Hidden Language of Numbers Revealed, along with several volumes of minimysteries and math puzzle books. He is also the creator of more than 20 crosswords for the Sunday New York Times, and the designer of the mathematical puzzle 36 Cube. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

A compulsively readable look at the secret language of numbers- their role in nature, movies, science, and everything in between.

What do Fight Club, wallpaper patterns, George Balanchine's Serenade, and Italian superstitions have in common? They're all included in the entry for the number 17 in this engaging book about numbers-... Read more

Calling all puzzlers...

From mathematics to word puzzles, from logic to lateral thinking, veteran puzzle maker Derrick Niederman delights in tackling the trickiest brainteasers in a new way. Among the old chestnuts he cracks wide open are the following classics:

Knights and knaves
The monk and the mountain
The dominoes...

Our society is churning out more numbers than ever before, whether in the form of spreadsheets, brokerage statements, survey results, or just the numbers on the sports pages. Unfortunately, people’s ability to understand and analyze numbers isn’t keeping pace with today’s whizzing data streams. And the benefits of living in the... Read more