The Little Giant Encyclopedia of Puzzles

Rating:
Summary: An Good Variety of Puzzles
Review: A huge collection (300+) of puzzles - some familiar, but many unique. What surprised me the most is how some of the puzzles are treated so simply, and the solutions prove the puzzle is very well crafted (so much so that the puzzle statements are too revealing in some cases.) It's as if the writers didn't know how to phrase a good logic puzzle when they had one. The puzzles are haphazardly arranged, and range in difficulty from the terribly simple ("Put these pictures in the right order") to the way-too-difficult (28 dominos, 7 multiplication problems), and there are a few that are just annoying ("Fill in the missing numbers" or "Which is the odd one out?" when there are many solutions beyond those shown in the book.) I think the visual puzzles, such as mazes and "what's different" pictures, are too detailed and too numerous for a puzzle book, but I found the numeric and logic puzzles quite distracting. Some of the solutions don't have enough explanation, and some are just wrong - a puzzle in itself to find them, but they're usually easy to understand.

Rating:
Summary: An Good Variety of Puzzles
Review: A huge collection (300+) of puzzles - some familiar, but many unique. What surprised me the most is how some of the puzzles are treated so simply, and the solutions prove the puzzle is very well crafted (so much so that the puzzle statements are too revealing in some cases.) It's as if the writers didn't know how to phrase a good logic puzzle when they had one. The puzzles are haphazardly arranged, and range in difficulty from the terribly simple ("Put these pictures in the right order") to the way-too-difficult (28 dominos, 7 multiplication problems), and there are a few that are just annoying ("Fill in the missing numbers" or "Which is the odd one out?" when there are many solutions beyond those shown in the book.) I think the visual puzzles, such as mazes and "what's different" pictures, are too detailed and too numerous for a puzzle book, but I found the numeric and logic puzzles quite distracting. Some of the solutions don't have enough explanation, and some are just wrong - a puzzle in itself to find them, but they're usually easy to understand.

Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: An outstanding collection of puzzles, mind teasers, riddles, and more. There are a few that don't quite seem to make the grade, but in a collection this size, there's plenty to keep you occupied for hours!

Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: An outstanding collection of puzzles, mind teasers, riddles, and more. There are a few that don't quite seem to make the grade, but in a collection this size, there's plenty to keep you occupied for hours!

Rating:
Summary: Boggle you for Sure!
Review: How could a boy be born in May, although his birthday was in June? Then grow up to marry his mother? Can ya' guess? No, neither could I. I only gave one of the EASY riddles. You can expect a nice big variety of logic puzzlers, twisty and turny mazes, caclulations that really make you concentrate, visual puzzles where the eye can outsmart the brain, and activity bogglers that make you work to find that hard to reach solution. Also, if you come upon a teaser that just can't be possible to answer...you flip to the back of the book to find the solution. Then you get to see if your friends can deduct the answer!

Rating:
Summary: Boggle you for Sure!
Review: How could a boy be born in May, although his birthday was in June? Then grow up to marry his mother? Can ya' guess? No, neither could I. I only gave one of the EASY riddles. You can expect a nice big variety of logic puzzlers, twisty and turny mazes, caclulations that really make you concentrate, visual puzzles where the eye can outsmart the brain, and activity bogglers that make you work to find that hard to reach solution. Also, if you come upon a teaser that just can't be possible to answer...you flip to the back of the book to find the solution. Then you get to see if your friends can deduct the answer!