The Mammoth Puzzle Carnival

by David J. Bodycombe

Book Overview

A mammoth-sized circus of challenges in images, language, math, codes, and intuitive thinking fills the pages of this delightfully illustrated IQ book. Hundreds of ingeniously designed teasers take... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786704276
• ISBN13: 9780786704279
• Release Date: May 1997
• Publisher: Running Press Book Publishers
• Length: 499 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.2" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

excellent book for brainy generalists

With tons of puzzle books on the market, almost anyone can find a book that caters to a particular type of puzzle that they like. That's fine for specialists, but not if you're the type of person who likes word puzzles AND math puzzles AND riddles AND picture puzzles. Personally, I would lose my mind sitting down and trying to finish 200+ pages of Soduku puzzles. That's why I love this book - it provides a variety of puzzles that test different types of skills. Most of the puzzles are visually appealing and very inventive (i.e. they don't use the same tired formats over and over again). However, the absolute best thing about the book is an incredibly satisfying scoring system. Within each round, puzzles are given point values from 2 - 10, which the occasional puzzle worth some bonus points. As you work your way through the book, you accumulate a running score. I finished the book about 7 years ago, and I'm seeing if I can go back and top my old score. The other reviewer mentioned the occasionally unsatisfying answer section. I agree with this critique, although I don't think it warrants knocking my rating down to a 4. Comparatively speaking, Bodycombe's answers are a lot more complete and accurate than other puzzle books I've seen. With 300+ puzzles, only a very few fall into this category.

The Mammoth Puzzle Carnival

This books provides some challenging puzzles for individuals to practice their mental agility. The book gives different types of puzzles: verbal, number, and visual vexations, logic and mystery box. There are different levels of difficulty within each category of the puzzles that are assigned points based on difficulty. The book contains 33 rounds of puzzles that are a combination of all different categories of Puzzles. The answers follow each round. At the back of the book they also have hints if you need some help.The only downside of the book is some of the puzzles are not fully thought through and can have more then one answer. Also, some of the answers don't explain how to find the solution.