Japanese Number Puzzles: A Challenging Collection of More Than 350 Logic, Sequence, and Mathematical Puzzles

by Puzzler Media and Anthony Immanuvel

Book Overview

In Japan, where the written language is highly complex and context-dependent, number puzzles are the people's puzzle of choice. Many of the puzzles in this book are unheard of in the U.S., but are... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560259418
• ISBN13: 9781560259411
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press
• Length: 351 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Variety of Challenging Logic Puzzles

I recently received this puzzle book as a gift from my daughter, who knows my love of Sudoku and other types of logic puzzles. Since it contains 360 puzzles of varying degrees of difficulty, it will take me a while to complete them all. Nevertheless, I feel confident enough of the quality to give it a five star rating based on my experiences to date in solving the puzzles. The book contains 15 types of puzzles (24 of each), several of which are Sudoku variants but many are unique logic puzzle types that I have not encountered previously. They are 1) Sudoku, 2) Shape Sudoku, 3) Killer Sudoku, 4) Greater Than Sudoku (very clever, your only clue is whether the number on each side of the square is greater than or less than the square which you are trying to complete), 5) Samurai Sudoku (five interlocking Sudoku puzzles which cannot be solved independently of each other, one of my favorite types), 6) Kakuro, 7) Zig-Zag, 8) Number Position (I'm already hooked on these), 9) Nonogram, 10) Minesweeper, 11) Latin Squares, 12) Number Link, 13) Arithmetic Squares, 14) Piecework, and 15) Towers. A few of the games with which I am familiar (such as Nonograms) also have alternative names in other publications. The great majority of the puzzles are number puzzles, but for the most part only in the sense that they involve the use of numbers as part of the logical process of analysis involved in their solution. Some such as Kakuro and Arithmetic Squares do involve basic arithmetical skills, but none involve higher math in any sense. Rather what unites all these puzzles is the need for the systematic application of logic to find their solutions. Many of those with which I was not familiar are both a lot of fun quite clever and often fairly difficult - I include in this category Number Position, Piecework and Towers. But of course, the attraction of such games is by nature intrinsically very personal, and I am sure every fan will have a different list of favorites - but one of the things that makes the book so enjoyable is the myriad of puzzle types. Thus, whatever a puzzler's mood, desire to be challenged and time available (short subway ride vs. long plane flight or airport delay), there will be a suitable puzzle here. My only two disappointments were that in a few cases the explanations, hints, and examples of solutions (given at the beginning of the section for each type of puzzle) seemed a little convoluted; in a least one instance for a puzzle type with which I was unfamiliar the example used as an illustration contained an error (luckily obvious). Also, for at least one puzzle used as an example, there was not a unique solution, so I spent some unnecessary time analyzing why I did not agree with the indicated solution until I realized multiple solutions were possible. If I discover this flaw occurs with enough frequency to become annoying as I complete more puzzles, I will delete my five star rating - but at this point as a great fan of logic puzzles I am