Customer Reviews

Will Shortz Presents The Little Black Book of Sudoku: 400 Puzzles

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Long recognized as a great "puzzler," not just for sudoku but for his NYTimes crosswords, Will Shortz provides 400 puzzles of difficulties ranging from "Light and Easy" to "Beware! Very Challenging!" Regardless of the level, these puzzles are scrupulously fair, requiring, in my experience, only two occasions of "trailing" (and those may have been my own fault), when most other such books often require the puzzler to use this "technique" many times during the book.

"Trailing" is the controversial "technique" in which a puzzler, unable to move further in the puzzle, (desperately) chooses a number from a set of pairs and inserts it into the box. The puzzler then trails the results as they suggest other solutions involving other numbers throughout the puzzle to see if they work or if, eventually, you get duplicates in rows, columns or squares. (If you do, you have to backtrack and insert the other number from the pair, which should work.) Many puzzlers feel that this "technique" is not "logic" but guesswork.

The book is a convenient size and has a spiral binding. The puzzles are large, and the pages are smooth and very white, allowing you to write in plenty of options and do whatever erasing you may require without roughing up the surface of the page (in case you decide to start over). Some of the puzzles which look the most difficult and have the most empty spaces are, in fact, the most fun, with surprises opening up as you do the puzzle. Many are very tricky (but fair), and some will have you berating yourself for missing something that should have been obvious, especially in the most challenging puzzles. For pure fun, without the frustration which trailing produces in many of us, this is one of the best books around.

My only problem with the book concerns the spiral binding. Very soon after I started working the Demanding and Very Challenging puzzles in the back of the book, the back cover and some of the answer pages started releasing themselves from the spiral. After many annoying episodes of this, I finally released the back cover and let it hang loose. (It didn't make any difference to the book's sturdiness.) I put the pages back into the spiral, and then used household wire to overcast the spiral completely closed. That held the pages in place and solved the problem. n Mary Whipple

Will Shortz is a fabulous puzzle editor, and this collection is one of his best. The spine of the book is spiral, which fascilitates puzzle working. Extremely high quality paper makes it easy to erase notes or mistakes. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys sudoku. It has four levels of difficulty, 100 puzzles of each level.

Don't advertise "spiral bound" if the spiral binding has an awkward hard binding over it.

One would assume that the sole reason for advertising a spiral bound sudoku book is that customers want a book that will LAY FLAT ON A TABLE. This book does not. Having nothing to do with its content, the format of this book is very unfortunate and the description above is misleading.

Mostly, I love the spiral binding and hardcover, because I can haul it around on my breaks at work. No more trying to write on my knee without poking my pencil through the paper. But I've done about 1/4th of the puzzles and the back cover has slipped out of the binding twice. So far it's slipped back in pretty easily but it's got me slightly worried.

WARNING!! I love other Will Shortz Sudoku books so I ordered the spiral version thinking that it would be a great format. Unfortunately, it is not a regular spiral that allows for opening and folding over to expose only the one page. The book has a huge spiral coil covered by an oversize hard plastic covering that makes the book impossible to fully open flat, let alone open and fold over as in a regular spiral notebook design. I am returning and hope to warn others about this design defect so you can avoid my troubles.

This is the third time I have bought this exact book, so that should tell you how much I like it. There are 100 puzzles for each level of difficulty for a total of 400 puzzles. Great quality paper, easy-to-use spiral binder.

This sudoku book is excellent.
The puzzles are large on good quality paper.
Plenty of room for solver to pencil in clues and eliminations.
Hint: cut the spiral's cover off and you can flip pages over while keeping your place in this massive collection.

There are four levels of play. Our 4-year-old and I have a running joke about the hardest level. The level is called "Beware - Very Challenging!" and we say it in our scariest voices. The puzzles are much harder than our newspaper's.

Just got this book about 3 weeks ago and I'm hooked! I'm very quickly going sudoku kuku! The book is very neat and sexy and with 400 puzzles in all levels, I'm going to be occupied for a while. Just this past weekend I solved my very first "Beware! Very Challenging" puzzle and I going crazy with excitement. If you love Sudoku, get this book!!!

I do the puzzles in this book wiith a nice, sharp #2 Ticonderoga pencil that has a good eraser. The pencil glides along the the very fine paper in this beautifully formatted book. The hard binding provides a great writing surface. I find doing the puzzles satisfying on a variety of levels--from the intellectual to the purely sensual. The puzzles range from easy to beyond difficult and are printed large, one per page. This is my favorite puzzle book ever. I can't wait for the next one.