Throughout Russian history, Russian scientists and mathematicians have often acquired the status of national heroes, with streets, parks or cities named after them. The long Russian winter nights must have contributed to a passion for long scientific, as well as literary, artistic and political, discourse.

The Chicken from Minsk provides a selection of these (mainly Russian) problems. They are the result of a collaboration between Yuri Chernyak, a Russian immigrant to the United States who had been an associate professor of physics at Moscow State University, and an American, Robert Rose, professor of material sciences and engineering at MIT.

I have always had a fondness for this sort of thing, and this slim volume offered the prospect of something refreshingly different. The problems are indeed presented with a distinctively Russian humour. There are numerous places where "bureaucrats" or "party officials" play roles as purveyors of fallacious reasoning or figures of fun to be outmanoeuvred by the use of some physical or mathematical subtlety.

On the whole, the problems that are more to do with physics, as opposed to mathematics, are the ones that were the newest to me, and among which I found the most unexpected insights. (I was a little disappointed by how many of the maths problems I had seen before: how many, I wonder, are of Russian origin?) Most involve very ordinary situations, such as the cooling of tea cups or the suspension of light fittings. Many require a careful understanding of the nature of differing reference frames. The solutions are analysed in some depth, often with increasingly subtle issues emerging according to the way in which the problems are examined. Although many of them can be solved with very little detailed calculation, the authors do not shy away from presenting such calculations when they are necessary or illuminating.

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Many of the problems are ingenious, though none is particularly mathematically complicated. Often they depend on a careful reading of the wording of the problem so that one is not misled into making false assumptions. In one or two cases, however, I found the phrasing to be genuinely misleading, and it was not until I examined the solution that I was able to realise what had been intended.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone intrigued by puzzles of any kind. Moreover, there is a considerable educational value in presenting physics or mathematics in this form. There is unquestionably a great deal to be gained by sharpening one's wits and insights on problems like these. There is no better way to achieve this than by having one's interest tickled by puzzles like these, which are both original and intriguing. If The Chicken from Minsk has a significant educational purpose, as I believe it has, this purpose is achieved, to a great extent, because the book is fun!

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Roger Penrose is professor of mathematics, University of Oxford.