Have you ever thought about the uniqueness and simplicity of One, or what it means to be Two? Is Four really so square and why are there Seven days of the week, Seven deadly sins, or even Seven wonders of the world? In One to Nine, Andrew Hodges brings numbers to life. Inspired by the popularity of Sudoku – and millennia of human attempts to figure things out – this pithy, kaleidoscopic book takes a fresh, witty and hands-on approach to such various topics as musical harmony, code breaking, and probabilities in poker and lotteries. It probes the surprising symmetries of time, space, matter, and forces. It even goes to the heart of what computers can do.

Andrew Hodges weaves together the inner life of numbers – the patterns of primes and powers that we try to grasp, and that have us in their grip. Accessible to anyone with a general curiosity and interest in puzzles, One to Nine might even have you completing a fiendish Sudoku in record time.


From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author
Andrew Hodges is the author of Alan Turing: The Enigma, the story of the British computer pioneer and codebreaker. He is active in research into fundamental physics and is a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford University.


From the Hardcover edition.

Table of Contents
1 The Unloved One

2 To Be or Not to Be

3 Trinidad

4 It’s a Square World

5 Fifth Freedom

6 The Joy of Six

7 The Wonder of it All

8 Sound Bytes

9 End Times Table

Hands-on Experience

Index of Main Subjects


From the Hardcover edition.