Customer Reviews

Test Your Creative Thinking: Enchance Your Lateral Thinking; Learn to Think Outside the Box (Times (Kogan Page))

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

And I have worked through dozens. As a professional puzzle writer/creator, I get to see a lot of "old chestnuts" that are repackaged versions of puzzles written decades or even centuries ago. Lloyd's book is quite different. There are a few authors (who I will not name) who have given "lateral thinking" something of a bad reputation. By comparison, Lloyd uses excellent illustrations (he is a painter and artist, btw), and really fun teasers that will have you scratching your head until you have that "aha!" experience and KNOW the answer. At first I couldn't make heads or tails of his puzzles, but once you get inside his head, it is quite enjoyable. I have now spent far too many hours on this book, and plan to spend many more. Fun stuff.

Lloyd King has created a fantastic book of puzzles that coax the reader to use lateral thinking and to break out of standard patterns of thought. This book is an incredible mind expander. The puzzles are original and hugely rewarding and will make a difference in the way you look at the world. The ultimate brain work out. Buy the book and feed your head.

The best puzzles are not always the ones with the most logical solution, but oftentimes those that stimulate your brain to make connections in an entirely new manner. Just as there are multiple proofs to mathematical problems, there are many novel ways to solve creative thinking puzzles that require various mixtures of convergent and divergent thinking. In Test Your Creative Thinking, Lloyd King brings together an adequate balance of intelligence, creativity and humor that pushed me to invent new patterns of thought.

One of the features I appreciated most about the book is the way it progresses evenly from low to high degrees of difficulty in a continuous development. Many of the items are deceptively easy, or seem to have no solution at all, but that is because the solution is typically a creative twist that is completely unique to Lloyd King. The advanced test will be a challenge to even the best puzzle solvers, and will without a doubt be a mental exercise worth engaging in.

What I enjoyed most about this book, as well as Lloyd's other books and creations, is the humor and easy going fun tone throughout the book. Many of the puzzles are indeed out of the box and the stories and settings that accompany them are no exception. I have purchased many puzzle books, and spent countless hours solving puzzles that seem canned or derivations of many others I had seen before. In Test Your Creative Thinking, this is definitely not the case, as puzzle wizard Lloyd King provides an opportunity to experience the workings of his equally divergent and convergent mind.

Whoever this Hiep Nguyen is, he is the one who is boring.
What a waste of space he wrote, so kindly don't bother.
I truly enjoy Lloyd Kings' puzzles, and have yet to get one right. This doesn't bother or frustrate me at all - what it does to me is exactly as Lloyd states - to think outside the box.
When I feel creatively crunched, I'll spend a well-earned half hour with this book. It gets my brain "in gear" again.
Well done!
Monik Robichaud
Author, Quotagrams & Stretchletter Puzzle Books

I fail to see why the last reviewer should think that the positive reviews of this book must be 'fake' simply because they are not his opinion? A good reviewer puts himself in other people's shoes, in this case those of puzzle lovers, nobody is helped with a bad review.

Sure, these are not mathematical puzzles - they are more difficult and yet anybody can do them. You do not need a university degree to do them, but they're by no means easy and will be a challenge to most people. The puzzles are funny, tricky and clever. I recommend people to buy this book if they like word and trick puzzles!

Lloyd King surely belongs to one of the great innovative puzzle designers of this time. His puzzles are so imaginative and unusually tricky, it is a joy to try them. When you fail to see the intended answer, you get an even greater thrill when his clever answers are revealed. This book will give you many hours of amusement, and is definitely a must have. I own all of Lloyd King's books, and I can't wait to get my hands on his next book.

Jan Merolant
Creative Puzzles

The main basis of Lloyd's puzzles is finding an alternative way of interpreting a scene and this collection is a worthwhile challenge for those who like to sit calmly and wait for inspiration. It is refreshing to see a puzzle designer with new ideas and I heartily recommend buying it.

This is a good book. It contains some sets of question to be answered. Try to figure those questions out and you may be surprised with the answer given at the Answer Key section.

At the first few questions, I found all my guesses are wrong. The answer was unpredictable and unusual. After answering half of the questions in this book, I can answer the next questions better. "Learn from your own mistake."

This books teach me to think differently, think outside the box. We are taught not many creativity lessons at school. Mostly the subjects are strongly drill our logic. That's why some people think this book is useless, crap, etc. In fact, this is a good way to unveil the potential in you.

Working things out that is. I found Lloyds puzzle books to be incredibly entertaining and really helped me think outside the box. This is actually not an unheard of phenomena and is supported by many researchers in the field of creativity, that one can improve ones capacity for creative thought with puzzles like these. I found this book to be a lot of fun and would strongly reccomend it.

Many of the puzzles here are highly subjective, and cannot always be deduced from a logical point of view. Many are simply arbitrary. The best puzzles are when we say 'of course!' but there are very few of those in this book.