That’s a great introduction. Who doesn’t want to go and do hundreds of puzzles after hearing that? Which brings us nicely to the puzzle books you’re recommending. How did you set about choosing them? I know. You can see all the tragedy but also the triumphs. You can see it all in the history of ciphers. So I’m a big fan. It’s a fun book. They don’t call it a treasure hunt. They call it a ‘puzzle hunt.’ But it is very similar. Going to the MIT Mystery Hunt was one of the adventures in my book. It’s where I met the people who wrote the puzzles for my contest. It’s a crazy annual event. It’s like an ironman triathlon for nerds. It’s 2,000 of the smartest people you can imagine, who come to Boston to the campus of MIT and spend 72 hours solving about 150 of the hardest, most baffling puzzles you can imagine. It’s a team competition and the team that finds the penny on the MIT campus wins.

Yes, the record is 3.5 seconds. It’s just mind-boggling. I can’t even twist it twice in 3.5 seconds. I’d say there are several things that are alluring about puzzles. One is the search for the aha moment when you actually solve a puzzle. I get an actual dopamine rush from it, the same chemical that—they say—you get from cocaine and sex and all that. So, for me, it is similar to a drug. Let’s go on to Masquerade by Kit Williams, which is an armchair treasure hunt. This was a big deal, I think. As I said, I’m a huge fan of paradoxes and recursion. As part of my book, I helped create the most time-consuming puzzle ever made. It’s a mechanical puzzle. It’s got 55 wooden pegs which you have to turn in a certain way. To finish it, you have to turn the pegs 1.3 decillion times, which is an unimaginably huge number. If you turn one peg per second, the universe will run out of energy by the time you solve it. Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount.Yes, the solution to this one is letter. Each group of pictures has a common theme. Together, they spell out a sentence, which then reveals the solution.

There are 50 skeleton crosswords in this brand new book with all new puzzles, and the grid pattern for each of the puzzles is different so you'll be provided with a unique crossword and a unique challenge to work out the grid shape for every one of these puzzles. We hope you enjoy the challenge that is posed by these skeleton puzzles - if you can complete them all, then you truly are a crossword master. The puzzles use British English, so for our American friends please note occasionally words may have a different spelling to you are used to: eg 'colour' as opposed to 'color' and so forth. Elonka Dunin teamed up with a German writer, Klaus Schmeh, who has a blog about cryptics and ciphers throughout history, and they wrote this book together. It’s a guide of how to break ciphers but you also get a lot of history, everything from World War Two to Roman ciphers. I just love it.But I will say I gained respect for riddles because they can be poetry. It’s not just about solving the puzzle. They can be these extended metaphors that make you see life in a different way. Let me just read you one of my favorites. It’s from The Hobbit by Tolkien and I think it’s a lovely little bit of poetry. The classic logic puzzle that uses numbers! In sudoku, the rules are compellingly simple although solving the puzzle may not be. Here you must place the numbers 1-9 once in each row, column and 3x3 box.

There are many popular puzzle types, including crosswords, wordsearches, arrow words, codewords, sudoku and kriss kross.

Book of Skeleton Crosswords Volumes 1-6 "Skeleton crosswords can keep me absorbed for hours, I used to like cryptic crosswords but these are better. ★★★★★ Let’s move on to the last of the puzzle books you’ve recommended which is Codebreaking: A Practical Guide by Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh . This is not about using a computer but traditional codebreaking using paper and pencil, is that right? The classic wordsearch puzzle is an enduring, perennial favourite. The wordsearch puzzles in this mixed puzzle book for adults are all themed on a range of topics, and you must simply find the words in each of the grids.

Which Christmas film do you love the most? Which Christmas film do you hate the most? What even counts as a Christmas film? I put that in there because it is the ultimate puzzle. How do we figure out why we’re here? I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I didn’t 100% figure out the meaning of life. I think part of the meaning of life is actually the search for the meaning of life. That may sound glib, but I truly believe it. Curiosity and looking for the meaning—even if we never find it—is the meaning. That actually relates to one of the books that I recommended, Gödel, Escher, Bach, which is all about recursion and paradox. I love that stuff. So yes, to me, part of the meaning of life is trying to solve the puzzle of the meaning of life. Based on the BBC TV quiz of the same name, with a mix of games from the series and new ones created especially for this book, there’s sure to be something you and your family will enjoy – and it’s suitable for all ages, too.Our 2021 book Mixed Puzzle Book for adults contains 100 new and fun puzzles across the following types. We've included brief instructions on each puzzle type below in case there are any you are unfamiliar with: To me, part of what I love about puzzles is that they fuel my curiosity and I’d say curiosity and gratitude are my two favorite virtues. My last book was about gratitude; this book is all about curiosity. Curiosity is what drives puzzlers. They’re like, ‘Why is it? What is it?’ There’s a great puzzler, Maki Kaji, who is called the godfather of Sudoku. He summarized puzzles in three symbols: the question mark, the forward arrow, and the exclamation point. The question mark is when you first see a puzzle, and you’re baffled; the arrow is the struggle for solutions, the exploration; and then the exclamation point is that aha moment. He said you have to embrace the arrow; you have to love the search. It’s a more poetic way of saying you have got to embrace the journey. So that’s another thing I love about puzzles, that search. One of my favorite puzzles is when you have to spot something that links a bunch of disparate objects or ideas. Finding patterns is the basis of science, it’s the basis of life. Here’s one with pictures, I’ll let you try and figure it out. That’ll be fun. What are these pictures of? This book is a collection of very clever puzzles. The author is mysterious and goes by the pseudonym M. Some are pictures, some are codes, and some are wordplay. One thing I love about them is that you have to use different types of thinking and solving techniques. So words are my true love. But I grew to love all these other genres, including jigsaws, which I was very snobby about and looked down on. I was, ‘They’re not real puzzles.’ But I am a reformed jigsaw skeptic. I can officially say I am now a jigsaw lover.