Cruel and Unusual

With all the death penalty blogging going on after Roper, I offer you this, from the introduction to Alperin and Bell's Groups and Representations:

We have included close to 200 exercises, and they form an integral part of the book. We have divided these problems into "exercises" and "further exercises;" the latter category is generally reserved for problems that introduce and develop theoretical concepts not included in the text. The level of the problems varies from routine to difficult, and there are a few that we do not expect any student to be able to handle. We give no indication of the degree of difficulty of each exercise, for in mathematical research one does not know in advance what amount of work will be required to complete any step!

Maybe that gets some people to work hard, but it wasn't so effective for me.