You did these as a kid, but they’ve been growing in popularity for adults over the last few years, too. When coloring books for grown ups exploded, other “fun” books appeared, including a wide range of connect the dots themes. Word wheels are a great way to test your vocabulary and whilst a simple puzzle, they are enduringly popular. The set-up of this puzzle type is quite simple: you are given a wheel that contains eight letters around the inside, and one additional letter in the middle of the wheel. You must then find as many words as you can (no proper nouns or plural) from the letters in the grid. Every word you find must use a selection of letters from the outside of the wheel and in addition every word must use the central letter. There is also always one word that uses every letter in the grid - can you find it? If you're good at solving the Countdown conundrum then you will probably be good at finding the nine-letter word in a wordwheel puzzle! This is a catch-all category of puzzle books, but perhaps one of the most comprehensive books is Puzzle Baron’s Logic Puzzles. The collection has 200 grid-based logic puzzles for you to try your hand at, ranging from easy to exceptionally challenging. You can also snap up 50 Logic Puzzles.

Anna Claybourne’s recent Incredible Optical Illusionsnot only offers up the illusions, but one of the goals of the book is to explain where and how they work. While intended for ages 7 and up and therefore not adult specific, there’s no reason why this doesn’t function perfectly well as an adult puzzle book. Picture Puzzles Maybe it’s been a while since you’ve had your mind bent with some fun optical illusions. These aren’t necessarily puzzles that you sit down with a pencil and find an answer to. Rather, they are puzzles you observe, that you question, and that make you wonder whether your eyes are seeing things (or whether your brain is making you see things that aren’t really there). A protip from the creators is this: if there are more blanks in the puzzle, it’s likely a more challenging puzzle. They also note that, despite the fact there is some math involved, it’s far more about using logic in arranging numbers than it is about having to do a ton of math. Dot-to-DotTwo solid entries into the lateral thinking puzzles category to take a look at include Perplexing Lateral Thinking Puzzles and Lateral Thinking Puzzlers. The goal of lateral thinking is to make you brain think differently about things that seem like they should be easy and logical to answer. A word tower or word pyramid is a simple anagram variant puzzle where you must solve crossword clues alongside each row of a tower. On each subsequent row of the tower, the word is an anagram of the word on the row above it with an extra letter added. For instance, if the clue for the first clue is 'Consume food' with answer 'EAT', then you will know that the next answer is an anagram of 'EAT' plus one new letter. Therefore if the clue is 'Dislike intensely' then 'HATE's is a valid answer since it's an anagram of EAT+H. There are many articles that outline the strategies that you can use to solve sudoku puzzles: the two most common rules are to consider the options that can be placed in an individual square (which numbers from 1-9 can go in this square?) and the second most common rule is 'where can a number go in this row/column/box region?). For instance, if there is only one square in a row that can contain a 3 then it must be placed there, since we know each row/column/box (called regions) must contain 1-9 exactly once each.

Once you’re in the mindset of looking at images carefully and figuring out what is and is not going on, it’s only logical to then reach for picture puzzle books. It’s likely you first discovered these in a place like Highlights magazine, but now, you can rediscover them as an adult. There are many popular puzzle types, including crosswords, wordsearches, arrow words, codewords, sudoku and kriss kross. Calm Puzzles: More than 50 puzzles, including word searches, snakewords, word finders and wordwheels, to promote calm and mindfulness

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Maze Madness includes 60 mazes for you to try to master. The book boasts that it not only has traditionally challenging mazes, but it also includes 3D elements to make getting out of the maze even harder. Optical Illusions 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:

Did you know there is a huge assortment of puzzle books featuring the game hangman you remember from elementary school? There are, and they’re focused on adults who want to have some fun. Have any other best puzzle books or logic puzzle books for adults? Leave ’em in the comments—I’d love to expand my own puzzle playing horizons. The more codewords you solve the more you get a sense for common patterns that occur, for instance the most common double-letters and so forth, which can be very useful when you see the same number occur in consecutive squares in the grid.

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But there is a whole other word of puzzle books out there that are perfect for adults. Whether you’re seeking logic puzzle books, visual puzzle books, or word puzzle books, here’s a look at some of the best puzzle books for adults. These are creative, fun, and encourage you to stretch your mind in different directions. Too often we think of puzzle books as throwaway things, but the truth is that they can make your brain sharper, more focused, and, well, they’re just fun.