Product Review - Amazing Aha! Puzzles by Lloyd King
Lloyd King's puzzle book: Amazing "aha!" Puzzles. 317 lateral thinking ("outside the box") puzzles that you've never seen before.
When I first saw the description of the book Amazing "aha!" Puzzles by Lloyd King, the phrase that caught my eye was "brand new lateral puzzles". I was skeptical. After reading a plethora of Lateral Thinking Puzzle books, I had my doubts that Mr. King had over three hundred original, non-derivate puzzles. You know what I'm talking about; the original puzzle talks about blue cars and green cars, so someone changes to red and yellow bicycles, and then calls it "original". Like I said, I was skeptical.
But, as it turns out, I was pleasantly surprised. These are not derivative puzzles. These are not the same old puzzles wrapped in a different wrapper. There are over 300 puzzles, and so far (although I have not yet gone through all the puzzles) I do not find myself thinking "Oh yeah, I saw this puzzle in Book X."
The book is nicely laid out, with simple but effective artwork to supplement the puzzles. Many of the puzzles rely on the artwork (matchstick puzzles, shape puzzles, etc). I would guess that about 75% of the puzzles have a visual component, which is just fine, but you should be aware of this if you are thinking about buying this book in order to read the puzzles to a group of students. Fortunately, since the artwork is generally fairly simple, you can recreate it on a blackboard, overhead transparency, etc. for a group to look at. Also, it is good that most of the puzzles are "visual", since King is at his very best with his visual puzzles.
The solutions at the back are clearly labeled and easy to find, which is a nice change from some Lateral Thinking Puzzle books, in which the process of finding the solutions is at least as difficult as the puzzles themselves. Of course, that does increase the temptation to quickly flip to the back of the book and find the answers!
During the weekend that I was reviewing this book, I had taken a group of teenagers from my church away for a weekend camping "retreat". While we were away, I invited them to look at the book and offer their comments. One boy said "I don't like it; they're too hard", while others said exactly the same thing I had said; it's nice to see a book that doesn't just repeat all the tired old puzzles that we've seen fifty times already.
As a mathematician, one of my favorite puzzles in the book is this one:
Can you figure it out? Scroll down to the bottom of this review to check your answer.
My one complaint with this book is that a few of the puzzles require specialized knowledge. For instance, a couple puzzles rely on the user recognizing Morse code, one requires that you know the name of an album by a well known musical group, and a couple require some knowledge of the French language (fortunately, the ones requiring French knowledge do contain veiled hints to that effect). Not a big deal, because there are only a handful of puzzles like this in a book of over 300 puzzles. Of course, once you realize there are some puzzles like that, you find yourself thinking "I wonder if this is one of those puzzles." And then, of course, you give up a little more quickly. So I wish there was some sort of notation next to puzzles that required some "specialized" knowledge.
Ultimately, the best use of this book is going to be in group settings, in which the teacher/leader can look at the solutions and then recognize which of the puzzles are best suited to the group. If you visit the Amazon.com page for this product, you can find a review in which a reader has written up ways to effectively use this book in a group setting.
Purchase This Resource At Amazon.com
If you would like to write a guest review of an educational product, please use the Contact Page to tell me what you want to write about.
When I first saw the description of the book Amazing "aha!" Puzzles by Lloyd King, the phrase that caught my eye was "brand new lateral puzzles". I was skeptical. After reading a plethora of Lateral Thinking Puzzle books, I had my doubts that Mr. King had over three hundred original, non-derivate puzzles. You know what I'm talking about; the original puzzle talks about blue cars and green cars, so someone changes to red and yellow bicycles, and then calls it "original". Like I said, I was skeptical.
But, as it turns out, I was pleasantly surprised. These are not derivative puzzles. These are not the same old puzzles wrapped in a different wrapper. There are over 300 puzzles, and so far (although I have not yet gone through all the puzzles) I do not find myself thinking "Oh yeah, I saw this puzzle in Book X."
The book is nicely laid out, with simple but effective artwork to supplement the puzzles. Many of the puzzles rely on the artwork (matchstick puzzles, shape puzzles, etc). I would guess that about 75% of the puzzles have a visual component, which is just fine, but you should be aware of this if you are thinking about buying this book in order to read the puzzles to a group of students. Fortunately, since the artwork is generally fairly simple, you can recreate it on a blackboard, overhead transparency, etc. for a group to look at. Also, it is good that most of the puzzles are "visual", since King is at his very best with his visual puzzles.
The solutions at the back are clearly labeled and easy to find, which is a nice change from some Lateral Thinking Puzzle books, in which the process of finding the solutions is at least as difficult as the puzzles themselves. Of course, that does increase the temptation to quickly flip to the back of the book and find the answers!
During the weekend that I was reviewing this book, I had taken a group of teenagers from my church away for a weekend camping "retreat". While we were away, I invited them to look at the book and offer their comments. One boy said "I don't like it; they're too hard", while others said exactly the same thing I had said; it's nice to see a book that doesn't just repeat all the tired old puzzles that we've seen fifty times already.
As a mathematician, one of my favorite puzzles in the book is this one:
| Next Please What number comes immediately after the following? Hint: It contains seventeen digits! 12,215,308,523,345,916 |
Can you figure it out? Scroll down to the bottom of this review to check your answer.
My one complaint with this book is that a few of the puzzles require specialized knowledge. For instance, a couple puzzles rely on the user recognizing Morse code, one requires that you know the name of an album by a well known musical group, and a couple require some knowledge of the French language (fortunately, the ones requiring French knowledge do contain veiled hints to that effect). Not a big deal, because there are only a handful of puzzles like this in a book of over 300 puzzles. Of course, once you realize there are some puzzles like that, you find yourself thinking "I wonder if this is one of those puzzles." And then, of course, you give up a little more quickly. So I wish there was some sort of notation next to puzzles that required some "specialized" knowledge.
Ultimately, the best use of this book is going to be in group settings, in which the teacher/leader can look at the solutions and then recognize which of the puzzles are best suited to the group. If you visit the Amazon.com page for this product, you can find a review in which a reader has written up ways to effectively use this book in a group setting.
Purchase This Resource At Amazon.com
If you would like to write a guest review of an educational product, please use the Contact Page to tell me what you want to write about.
| Next Please Solution King has very cleverly made a puzzle which is so incredibly simple that you automatically assume it is far more complex than it really is. He has not given a series of numbers; what he has given is a seventeen digit number, but because we expect a difficult problem, we assume the commas are something other than digit separators. So the correct answer is: 12,215,308,523,345,917. |
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