Customer Reviews

Riddle of the Unicorn

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I love riddles and puzzles and so finding this was a nice surprise. Most books of riddles seem to be either oriented towards kids or are merely rehash classic riddles ("how many were going to St Ives"). The Riddle of the Unicorn is a compendium of original riddles all in a poetic format. That is, each riddle is a poem that provides an obscure description of the answer you seek.

The layout of this book is exceptional with darkened tabs on the page edges leading you to the riddles, the hints, the answers and the explanations.

The riddles are each laid out one per page with a nice graphic background. Each page also has a cross reference at the bottom showing you on which page to find the hints (there are usually two or three for each riddle), the answer and the explanation. This makes it much easier to find just what you're looking for.

Although I prefer to solve puzzles without hints, one kind of hint I found very useful (once I figured out what it was). The author provides a consonant/vowel grouping for the word. For example, if the answer were "WORD" then the check-hint would be "CVCC" because W, R and D are consonants and "O" is a vowel. This saved me several times when I thought I knew the answer but was able to eliminate it using the check-hint but without actually seeing the answer.

The answer section is intended so that when looking up the answer to one riddle, you don't accidentally see the answer to another. I found this a tad over-bearing, but having seen unwanted answers before when checking a puzzle answer, I can appreciate this.

The explanations provide a line-by-line description of the meanings of the riddle. There were several times where I managed to solve a riddle so that it made sense for almost all the lines but I couldn't figure out what one or more of the lines meant. The explanations made it all clear.

There are still about a dozen in the book that I have yet to solve, but they were all enjoyable. A handful of them were what I considered to be far too easy but in general they all provided a suitable mental workout. I look forward to any additional riddle books from this author.