History Literature / MurderousMaths

* SwitchingPOV: Mostly there is an omniscient narrator, but The Phantom X narrates in first-person some parts of that book and Professor Fiendish is the first-person narrator of much of ''Professor Fiendish's Book of Diabolical Brain-Benders'', with his pet pig Truffles taking over for the answers. Curiously, a few puzzles use the traditional narrative style.

** Subverted with Hunjah the Headless, who uses a more convinci

* Arrowgram: Princess Laplace sends one to Colonel Cancel and the Valiant Vector Warriors in ''Guaranteed to Bend Your Brain'' for help when she is imprisoned.

** ''Desperate Measures'' sees the Gollarks try to use a doomsday weapon to blow up the Earth in a chapter explaining scientific notation. The device is measured in zzaps, where each zzap is roughly equal to a giant volcano exploding. Unfortunately for the Gollarks, they set it to ''8.91 x 10^-14'', which leads to the weapon briefly shuddering before keeling over ineffectually.

* PaperTiger: The Gollarks sic a Battle Cruiser on humanity at one point. It's huge, looks ominous, packed with offensive weaponry, frequently referred to as TheDreaded, and can apparently move at a top speed of "180 glomps per mnult". So what went wrong? [[spoiler:It's revealed that a "glomph" is only a few kilometres and a "mnult" is 3 days. Turns out that it's ''slower than an average snail and tastes like lettuce'', which it promptly gets outran by a horde of snails and eaten to scrap]]

* TakeAThirdOption: A variant on the "Dueling Wizards" puzzle in ''Do You Feel Lucky?'' has the three barbarians in a cannon brawl, but one is at a severe disadvantage compared to his other two opponents. His best option it to shoot ''away'' from both of them so Grizelda (with a higher chance of hitting her target) takes aim at Urghum since he has the best chance of hitting his target and thus is the most dangerous.

* AnachronismStew: The ''Su Doku'' book has a running story with Blade and the gangsters trying to complete one in a newspaper in [=1920s=] America. (Whilst the date is totally anachronistic, [[AluminiumChristmasTrees they are an American invention]].)

* AnAxeToGrind: Urgum the Axeman. Grizelda's also been shown with a triple-bladed battleaxe at one point.

* TooDumbToLive: Possibly the Evil Gollarks. Definitely Binky.
* UpperClassTwit: Binky Smallbrains, one of several inhabitants of Fogsworth Manor.

* MyHovercraftIsFullOfEels: The Gollarks ([[RunningGag yet again]]) attempt to destroy humanity by getting help from another alien race called the "Ploog Warriors". Problem is, they speak different languages, requiring an interpreter between them. All the Ploogs' translation attempts fail along with it taken UpToEleven when the Gollarks enlist the help of several other species with individual languages which would require more interpreters between all of them than warriors. [[EpicFail This ultimately causes the entire plan to botch within a few minutes]] when they all can't understand the Gollarks' directions and crash into each other.

* NintendoHard: ''Professor Fiendish's Book of Diabolical Brain-Benders'' is this for puzzle books. Taken UpToEleven by the final puzzle, The Devil's Dice, which involves two dice with numbers such as 18 and 91 on them, so you can't tell whether it should be 18 or 81, 91 or 16, and so on; the challenge is to work out what the two numbers on the bottom of the dice add up to on the third throw, having been shown the results of two previous throws, and unlike every other puzzle in the book, ''no answer is provided''. (It was accidentally made UnintentionallyUnwinnable in early printings, which transposed the illustrations of the second and third throws.)

The books in the series are:[[note]]The first two books in the series were originally part of ''The Knowledge'', a series of educational books covering different subjects, and hence covered a broad range of subjects. It was decided that there was enough mileage to spin it off into its own range, and each subsequent book covers a specific area of maths[[/note]]

* ''Guaranteed to Bend your Brain'' (aka ''Murderous Maths'')
* ''Guaranteed to Mash your Mind'' (aka ''More Murderous Maths'')
* ''Awesome Arithmetricks'' (aka ''The Essential Arithmetricks'') (basic functions, manipulating equations, long division etc.)

* ''Savage Shapes'' (aka ''Vicious Circles and Other Savage Shapes'') (polygons and formulas for various parts of shapes)
* ''The Key to the Universe'' (number property equations, Fibbonaci etc. right up to irrational transcendental numbers and imaginary numbers)

* ''The 5ecret L1fe of [=Code5=]'' (aka ''Codes: How to Make Them and Break Them'') (patterns and logic)

* ExactWords: To teach excluded angles, one of Blade's quests for money involves finding the coffin of fabled gangster Bluetooth Fonetti, who set up his own funeral to hide a stash of gold he stole in his coffin. Dolly begrudgingly gives them instructions on how to find it. They come up with a diagram which follows the instructions to the letter...except that Dolly knows they actually screwed up considering on how Bluetooth wrote the directions to his burial site. The book then draws a more-technical diagram which reveals why: There's ''two'' possible locations where the coffin is buried.
* FriendlyEnemy: Grizelda and Urgum. Usually. One book had her army and his seventeen sons fight each other in a friendly skirmish and have a party the following night comparing their new scars.

** Dolly Snowlips, as it turns out, cannot cook.

* PaperTiger: The Gollarks sic a Battle Cruiser on humanity at one point. It's huge, looks ominous, packed with offensive weaponry, frequently referred to as TheDreaded, and can apparently move at a top speed of "180 glomps per mnult". So what went wrong? [[spoiler:It's revealed that a "glomph" is only a few kilometres and a "mnult" is 3 days. Turns out that it's ''slower than an average snail and tastes like lettuce''. Hang on, is that a swarm of snails over there?]]

* ShapedLikeItself: Chainsaw Charlie's chainsaw-shaped suitcase, as it turns out, contains a chainsaw-shaped chainsaw. Didn't see ''that'' one coming.