Alex Bellos

Alex Bellos has a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy; he has worked for the Guardian in London and Rio de Janeiro, where he was the paper's foreign correspondent. He writes a regular puzzle column in the Guardian, and presents documentaries on BBC Radio 4. He is the author of a number of books which have sold more than a million copies and been translated into more than 20 languages.

The first of these was the critically acclaimed book about Brazilian football — Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life (2002) — which was updated and republished in 2014. His second — Alex's Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches From The Wonderful World of Mathematics (2010) — was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and was followed by Alex Through the Looking Glass: How Life Reflects Numbers and Numbers Reflect Life (2014). He has also written a series of popular puzzle books — including Can You Solve My Problems?: Ingenious, Perplexing, and Totally Satisfying Math and Logic Puzzles (2016) and The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book: Lexical Perplexities and Cracking Conundrums From Across the Globe (2021) — and the much-loved children's books series, Football School. 

His most recent book — Think Twice: Solve the Simple Puzzles (Almost) Everyone Gets Wrong — was published by Square Peg in 2024.