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The Mammoth Book of Brain Teasers
More than 400 all-new mind-bending puzzles from one of the world's leading puzzle masters, ranging from basic brain-teasers to baffling brain-tormenters. The collection includes word-play, logic problems, math conundrums, and visual/spatial challenges.
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 1, 2018
Kudos and complaints:
1. There are some very good spatial puzzles in this book, but if you can't solve them, the back of the book's answer isn't going to help you, since it regularly contains a simple answer for difficult problems, with no elaboration or explanation.
2. There are, unfortunately, a lot of puzzles in this book that are "standards" ("classics"?) So a good third of them I've solved before.
3. There is a really good mix of different kinds of puzzles here. As I mentioned before, some of them are not very interesting, and as I will mention next, many of them are impossible or wrong, but the puzzles aren't generally monotonous.
4. There are an incredible amount of puzzles that are not explained clearly enough, or have missing assumptions, to make them unsolvable. One puzzle, even after reading it, sharing it with other people, and looking at the answer, I still couldn't figure out what it was asking.
5. There are a not insignificant number of answers in the back which are wrong. This could occasionally be due to the unclear directions of #3, where the author has some assumption that he doesn't tell me about, but there are also multiple puzzles asking for a 'minimum number' of such and such where I found a solution smaller than the one in the back.
Here's my favorite flub of a puzzle in this book: which direction do the planets rotate--clockwise or counter-clockwise?
1. There are some very good spatial puzzles in this book, but if you can't solve them, the back of the book's answer isn't going to help you, since it regularly contains a simple answer for difficult problems, with no elaboration or explanation.
2. There are, unfortunately, a lot of puzzles in this book that are "standards" ("classics"?) So a good third of them I've solved before.
3. There is a really good mix of different kinds of puzzles here. As I mentioned before, some of them are not very interesting, and as I will mention next, many of them are impossible or wrong, but the puzzles aren't generally monotonous.
4. There are an incredible amount of puzzles that are not explained clearly enough, or have missing assumptions, to make them unsolvable. One puzzle, even after reading it, sharing it with other people, and looking at the answer, I still couldn't figure out what it was asking.
5. There are a not insignificant number of answers in the back which are wrong. This could occasionally be due to the unclear directions of #3, where the author has some assumption that he doesn't tell me about, but there are also multiple puzzles asking for a 'minimum number' of such and such where I found a solution smaller than the one in the back.
Here's my favorite flub of a puzzle in this book: which direction do the planets rotate--clockwise or counter-clockwise?
Displaying 1 of 1 review