Customer Reviews

The Official Book of Hanjie

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I agree with the other reviewers about the myriad problems with this book.

The puzzles are graded as Easy, Medium and Hard depending on the size of the grid the puzzle is printed on, with no actual evaluation of the difficulty of the puzzle itself.

The grids are 3 set sizes, and in many cases very poorly related to the size of the puzzle.

Easy puzzles are all printed on 25 x 25 grids, but the puzzle images may be much smaller (example, puzzle #7 in which the image is only 25 x 11, and would have been better printed on a 25 x 15 grid; as it is, you are left with 8 empty rows on the top and 6 on the bottom. It's just annoying.) 13 of the 36 "easy" puzzles are printed on grids at least 5 lines too large (leaving 5 or more completely empty rows or columns across the top & bottom edges together, or across the right & left sides together).

Medium puzzles are on 30 x 30 grids. Of the 26 medium puzzles, I count 12 which have 5 or more completely empty lines at the top/bottom edges or the right/left edges. All of those puzzles should have been put on smaller grids to begin with. One of the more egregious examples is puzzle #45, a very simple 30 x 15 puzzle printed on a 30 x 30 grid (thus graded as "Medium"), but with 8 empty lines across the top and 7 empty lines across the bottom.

Hard puzzles are on 35 x 35 grids. There are 38 in this category and 9 have the same problem of being printed on grids at least 5 rows/columns too large.

A major problem with this book: there are quite a few puzzles that do, in fact, require you to guess. An absolute no-no in a logic puzzle book!

More minor quibbles with the book:

lower grade paper used (thinner and grayer than in other similar books I've enjoyed)

the heavy bold grid lines (the ones used every 5 squares vertically and horizontally) don't extend into the clues section. So you have to be especially careful, for example, when working on the bottom section of a 35 x 35 puzzle that the squares you are filling in line up correctly with the line of clues at the top of the puzzle. The bold grid lines every 5 squares usually alleviate this issue, but not when the bold lines don't show in the clues at all!

the completed images themselves are, to my mind, inferior to what I've encountered in other puzzle books. Puzzles titled TV Set, Brick & Trowel, Screw Head, Paint Can, Sugar Bowl, and Skull are examples that would have benefited from more detail and/or better definition.

I don't exactly hate this book; it would be more accurate to say I really haven't enjoyed it. I give it one star because it is by far the worst book of its type that I have encountered.

Save your money, find another book or dig this one out of a super-bargain bin!

This set of puzzles suffers from several faults... The grid squares are too large, the paper is too coarse, and even on some easy puzzles, you are forced to guess, in spite of the author's admonition that you should "never guess!" In addition, I found that some puzzles have ambiguous solutions... that is, they have more than one solution.

The author should, at a minimum, have run these puzzles through a solver application (they can be found online) to eliminate the guesswork and multiple solutions.

I have been playing these pencil puzzles for over 15 years, and I have never seen a book with so many illogical puzzles. Nearly half of these puzzles are insolvable unless you cheat, which is incredibly frustrating. Many of the puzzles are also illogical, with the numbers on the sides not matching up to the numbers on the top. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK! Buy "Paint-doku" instead.

I have an addiction to this type of puzzle, but this book is the worst version of them that I have seen. Some puzzles cannot be solved by logic, but only by guesssing. Unless you have a serious addiction, skip this book for other titles in this genre.

I am not sure the author of this book understands the nature of the puzzles. Some puzzles listed as easy were not doable, some were very boring with no logic involved in solving, some had no starting point and some were good.

This is the WORST book on Hanjie I've ever seen. The author has tried to construct on the regular 5 block grids, but he can't seem to get the hang of it, so on almost every puzzle, you have rows and columns, sometimes up to three or four on each side, that you have to black out. This makes the 5 block grid almost useless for counting and placement. The easy puzzles are too easy and the hard puzzles have too many puzzles that you have to guess where to start. I am really, really sorry I wasted my money on this book, and I recommend that nobody else do it.

The only reason I gave this book even ONE star is because Amazon won't let me do this review without a star rating. In reality I would rate it as a -3 stars!

The compiler, Timothy E Parker, has not even bothered to check that these pixel puzzles are solvable (let alone the degree of difficulty). While able to solve all puzzles in other books, I am stumped on number 66 for example, without being able to fill in a single cell! Other puzzles in this book are trivially easy.

He even has the name of the book wrong - they are pixel puzzles, what on earth is Hanjie? And what makes him "official"?

Moreover, the example and strategies shown in the Introduction, do not even included the most basic techniques.

"The world's most syndicated puzzle compiler"? Must refer to quantity not quality.

I wish I had read the reviews from others earlier. But I do feel a lot better now.
I had always been confident about my puzzle solving skills until I spent time on this book --- I couldn't believe that so many of them did require you to guess,(what's the point?!), or they left you clueless. I got so frustrated everytime I had to leave an unsolved puzzle behind and move on to the next one. I really started wondering if I was too dumb for this. Now I know they do require you to cheat...
I'll just leave this book alone as soon as I get other puzzle books.

I am a big fan of this type of puzzle; however, the puzzles in this book are put on too large a grid, so that it is a pain to color in the squares. Furthermore, the first half of the puzzles are ridiculously easy that they take more effort to color than to figure out.
I imagine that this book is good for beginners, as other reviewers have mentioned. If you are already familiar with these puzzles, though, I'd opt for a different book.

I have loved this type of puzzle for a long time. I wish that I would have checked the reviews before buying this book. I have found many of the same complaints as the other reviewers. Don't waste your money on this book.