Review: Puzzle Ninja: Pit Your Wits Against The Japanese Puzzle Masters

Puzzle Ninja: Pit Your Wits Against The Japanese Puzzle Masters by Alex Bellos
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Sitting down to do the crossword or Sudoku in a paper gives most people a lot of pleasure, it stretches your brain and enables you to while away a few moments away from a screen of some sort. For those that want to stretch themselves some more, then Alex Bellos has been over to Japan and has come home bearing puzzle shaped gifts.

These have been sought from the enigmatologists of Japan and are very different to the puzzles that you may have come across so far. There are graphical ones, ones that create mazes, a puzzle where you need to separate the wolves from the sheep and even a golf one. For most of them, there are two or three simple rules, however, from simplicity comes complexity and these may start easy, but he collected puzzles that he describes as excruciatingly difficult.

Dare to ask questions and seek answers to the puzzles of life. ― Lailah Gifty Akita

So if you fancy having your brain fried in new and fiendishly complicated ways, this could be the books for you. There are twenty of these new puzzles and over 200 examples in total collected from the wonderfully named Puzzle Poet and The Super Sensi to name but two. Was pleased to see one of my favourites in here, O'Elaki too. If you love puzzles then this is one for your bookshelf; though I cannot be held responsible for any stress caused…

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