Customer Reviews

Right-Brain Teasers: A Photo Quiz for the Mind's Eye (Brainwaves Books)

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This volume contains a large selection of photographs of primarily Victorian artefacts. Readers are invited to discern the purpose of each oddity - hence the claim to 'right brain' strengthening. I could not discern themes, trends or any guiding cognitive theory holding the assembly together. What the reader gets is a mish-mash of images more suited to an antique store fetishist. If poring over images of Victorian apple corers. toasters and other assorted early industrial artefacts, is your hobby, then this book is right up your alley. On the other hand, if you expected this book (which I bought on the assumption that it might have something interesting to say about right brain visualisation and cognition)to be of some intellectual value, you will be sadly disappointed. Ironically it is a book largely about rubbish; the rubbish of a bygone age. Happily, this book, a testimonial to that age, I suspect will soon be numbered among its ranks.

Being a life-long lover of puzzles and mind games, I've collected lots of brain teaser books over the years. The title of this book really caught my eye. After all, aren't all brain teaser books "left-brained" by definition? Not necessarily so with this book.

The format is quite simple: each page shows a house-hold invention from the 18th or 19th century, along with the real life dimensions of the object written at the bottom of the page. Your challenge is to find out what exactly the device was used for. This forces you to think about things creatively, not just in a linearly logical way. Each answer also includes some very interesting history on how the tool was put into overall practice, and other related customs for the times.

There are countless puzzle books in print, most of them dealing with the same old word problems and lateral thinking problems. But this one offers something creatively different than the rest.