Customer Reviews

The Rails I Tote: Forty-Five Illustrated Spoonerisms to Decipher (Owl Books)

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Christopher Manson is the author and illustrator of the book "Maze", which is subtitled as "Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle" (and it deserves that title, in my opinion). "The Rails I Tote" is not another "Maze", and that's why I can't give it the same 5-star rating. Still, it's another unique book with Mansons' similar avant-garde feel.

There are 45 sections, each containing one page-long short story, accompanied by an illustration. In each illustration, you have to find the spoonerism. For those who don't know, you "spoonerize" two words by swapping their first letters or first consonnant sounds (so for example, the spoonerism of "peas and carrots" sounds like "keys and parrots"). The title of each short story and the story itself lend clues as to what the spoonerism is. For example, there's one picture showing a scientist tying little tags to the bodies of a bunch of bees. The title of the related story is "In Hot Water". So "bee tags" becomes "tea bags", and that's the solution.

But like "Maze", these puzzles aren't all as easy as they sound. I don't give up easily when it comes to brain teasers, but some of these ones really stumped me. Fortunately the book's last page shows all 45 of the answers. The answers are encoded by letter where 1 is for A, 2 is for B, 3 is for C, etc., so that you don't accidentally glance at an answer you didn't want to know yet. I hope this book goes back into print, because it's another example of Manson combining his brainteasers, wild art work, and bizarre stories into one clever little book.