[wglb]

Additionally, the difficulty points on some problems changed as new proofs were discovered. In particular, Fermat's last theorem went from M50 (math required, Research problem) to HM45 (Higher math required, more than a team project but less than a Research problem).

Additionally, somewhere along the way, the marvelous tape sorting fold out pages have dissappeared from the Sorting and Searching volume.

[PhantomGremlin]

It's been 40 years or so since I read TAOCP in any depth. But you seem pretty familiar with it, so I'll ask you the following, maybe you remember:

I think it was somewhere in Volumes 1, 2 or 3 (but maybe an entirely different book not even by Knuth) where one of the exercises says something like:

19. M50 ...solve this quite complex problem .... For the instructor who assigns all odd numbered exercises.

A little bit of humor in an otherwise quite dry set of books.

[wglb]

I am familiar with some sections of it.

I don't remember that particular one, but there are odd bits of humor throughout his work. "MIX is the world's first polyunsaturated computer."

Browsing through it again, I see a reference in section 1.2.8 about Fibonacci numbers, problem 37 references a paper by R. E. Gaskell and M. J. Whinihan. I worked with Mike Whinihan in a previous lifetime. He got his PhD in economics at U of Chicago in just three years, to the dismay of his classmates. He wrote that paper "Fibonacci Nim" when he was in High School. And looking at the beginning of Chapter 2 "Information Structures" he mentions structures in "algebraic language like FORTRAN, C, or Java" (third edition). In the first edition, neither C nor Java had yet been invented.