Alex Bellos is a writer and broadcaster, and is The Guardian’s puzzle columnist. His latest book, So You Think You’ve Got Problems? (Amazon UK, Waterstones, Guardian bookshop), is a collection of puzzles.
Style
So You Think You’ve Got Problems? contains 125 puzzles, plus a selection of shorter ‘teaser’ puzzles spread throughout the book. Between the puzzles, Alex tells us of the historical context of the puzzles, points out connections between puzzles, gives small hints, as well as discussing what makes a puzzles good.
Control
The book ends with answers to all the puzzles, including clear explanations of how these solutions can be found.
Damage
As anyone who follows his Guardian puzzle column will know, Alex has very good taste in puzzles. Unsurprisingly, therefore, this is a great collection of puzzles, and there is plenty in this book to keep you thinking for a long time. I do a lot of puzzles, and some of the puzzles in this book were similar to puzzles I’d seen before, but there were plenty that were not familiar to me and lots of new situations to think about.
Aggression
I’d recommend this book to anyone who like puzzles and can think of a few people who I could give this to next Christmas…
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