This is a truly fantastic book for a very specific audience. You have to love the most challenging logic puzzles. If you've ever bought a Dell or Penny Press magazine dedicated to just logic puzzles and enjoyed it, you will love this book. If on the other hand you prefer easier puzzles, or a wider variety of puzzles, or are new to puzzle books in general, I'd recommend starting with a different puzzle book first.
I've played or partially played dozens of puzzle books. I had this one on my shelf for a while before finally deciding to give it a try. I'm now about a third of the way in and am completely hooked. I just added books 2, 3, and 4 in the series to my Wishlist. :^)
I didn't think I would care for the narrative element and the overarching mystery, but I'm actually really enjoying it, and it's making this book "stickier" than it might otherwise be. I'm also very pleased with the choice of binding, so you can easily lay it flat and write in it if you choose to. (I normally avoid writing in puzzle books at all costs. But because of the binding, I decided to just dive in and write in this book and am very glad I did, as it makes the solving experience much more pleasant. And if I really care to have an unblemished copy later, it's not very expensive so I could buy a 2nd copy.)
I was torn about giving this book 4 or 5 stars. It's really a fantastic expression of what it's trying to be -- a series of high quality logic puzzles connected by a narrative and mystery element. In the end, I rounded down as there are a few things that my ideal version of this book would do differently. These are:
1. I'm not a huge fan of narrative in puzzle books, so I'm glad this book doesn't have a ton of connecting narrative. But the narrative it does have is stilted and dry, not evocative or enticing. So far, there is zero detail to distinguish any of the characters from one another, they might as well just be A, B, C, etc.. (Compare to, for example, Maze of Games, another book with very hard puzzles but with warmer and more compelling fiction.) Or put it another way, the narrative feels like it was written by a master logician who's been writing and editing logic puzzles for decades. :^)
2. It's a bit repetitive. I enjoy logic puzzles, but there's a reason I no longer buy those Dell or Penny Press magazines with ~100 logic puzzles in a single magazine. I prefer puzzle books with a wider variety of different kinds of puzzles. (That being said, I'm definitely hooked on this series and will likely solve them all!)
3. The puzzles are definitely tricky. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old puzzling age, but I'm not finding it quite as fun as I used to to beat my head against the trickiest logic puzzles out there. One aspect of the trickiness: in many puzzles, facts are given by characters in the book, and when a character is a guilty party in that particular puzzle, anything they say may be false (or of course, it may still be true too). I'm loathe to make an assumption as to the guilty party/parties then have to backtrack, so often this means reading and re-reading all the clues multiple times until I can find an entry where I can narrow down and determine that at least some innocent guests and therefore rely on their information. Awesome, but also a bit tiring. One thing that might help here that many puzzle books have done is provide a dedicated message board of some sort where players can ask one another for hints. But at least solutions are given within the book itself along with complete logical proof of what the answer must be the one unique answer. (There are generic puzzle-related message board websites, e.g. puzzling.stackexchange.com, but I prefer a forum dedicated to a specific book.)
The above being said, I want to specifically refute what another reviewer said. While I'm only 1/3rd of the way through the book, so far, I haven't found a single bug. The puzzles are tricky and they can be frustrating, but so far, every time there was an ambiguity in how to interpret a given clue or set of clues, there was a way to logically deduce and prove a unique solution. As with many logic puzzles, the wording is very precise and must be interpreted correctly, and it's easy to make a mistake or miss a nuance of the given wording. But being very careful, I have been able to solve every puzzle so far w/o hints. Most other puzzle books will have at least a few unfairly clued puzzles that you can't solve without an extraordinary leap of intuitive, and you'll find other people complaining about said puzzles online. Not here. You can positively determine the answer of every puzzle. The upside of have a puzzle book of 100% logic puzzles.
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Solve logic puzzles AND play sleuth at the same time!
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Puzzlewright Press prides itself on commitment to quality, accuracy, creativity, variety, inclusivity, and fun! Our products cover core puzzle types such as crosswords and sudoku, as well as every other genre: logic games, brainteasers, word searches, memory puzzles, mazes, acrostics, trivia, kakuro, chess, and more.
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Customer reviews
I truly enjoy puzzle books and word problems and when I came across this, I was very excited. The idea of a mystery that just keeps going sounded entertaining and time consuming (for long drives and plane rides). This book did not disappoint. Not only was this book challenging but it was well put together. It has a nice thick paper cover and the pages are not super thin. The problems have solutions which can be found in the back if they are getting challenging. Overall, I enjoyed this and am still working through the problems!
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Top reviews from other countries
Peter Waite
Great for hardcore logic puzzlers with a high boredom tolerance
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 4, 2018Sarah Y
Great logic puzzles and story
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 22, 2018Charles.P
Some good puzzles and all written with a theme.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 1, 2018pandroid
all of the puzzles are the same type of puzzle - no variety at all so it gets boring.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 12, 2018
