 Collections of Brain Teasers
Brain teasers and twisters to challenge even the brightest.
The Puzzlemaster Presents : 200 Mind-Bending Challenges (Other)
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The Puzzlemaster Presents : 200 Mind-Bending Challenges (Other)
One of the most popular features of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday broadcasts have been the seven minutes of puzzling with puzzlemaster Will Shortz. Shortz, former editor of Games magazine and now crossword editor for the New York Times, has compiled 200 of the show's best word games into this collection. About half are short puzzles that may take a bit of thinking to solve. The other half are word games with 10 to 20 parts to work through. Can you find a common, unhyphenated English word that contains all but one of the letters L through V? Can you tell what barbers, roosters, and beehives have in common? How many boys' names can you find concealed in a dime? Will Shortz has scores of such challenges; even faithful listeners of Weekend Edition Sunday may find many of them worth resolving. Those who haven't heard these on-air presentations will find them a welcome source of puzzling entertainment. Shortz is highly skilled at finding and concocting puzzles that are fun, challenging, and amusing.
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The Brain Pack: An Interactive, Three-Dimensional Exploration of the Mysteries of the Mind
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The Brain Pack: An Interactive, Three-Dimensional Exploration of the Mysteries of the Mind
The Brain Pack is an interactive, three-dimensional tour of the ever-convoluted human brain. Egyptians and early Greeks believed that we thought with our hearts. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, said our brain was doing all the work. Medieval scholars disagreed, claiming that we thought with our souls. When Renaissance philosopher René Descartes proclaimed, "I think, therefore I am," the world changed, and--more than 350 years later--magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography proved him right. Packed with more information than a three-pound brain may be able to store at once, The Brain Pack leads you through basic brain anatomy, beginning with a life-sized pop-up of the inner human head. You'll also learn about emotions; the senses; consciousness; "sex in the brain" (testosterone and estrogen, puberty, aggression, and aging); intelligence and language; and memory. Hands-on features such as the Primary Emotions Wheel, pull-out flaps, and pop-up charts are entertaining, as are the fact-or-fiction games, memory exercises, IQ tests, and pull-out pamphlets. In a tray in the back of the book, you'll find a 15-minute audiocassette tour of the brain and a deck of cards that test your psychic abilities. Anyone who has ever marveled at the complexity of the human brain will revel in this entertaining, educational book.
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Perplexing Lateral Thinking Puzzles
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Perplexing Lateral Thinking Puzzles
"Jim and Joe were fighting, so their mother punished them by making them stand on the same sheet of newspaper ... in such a way that neither boy could touch the other. How?" (The answer's in the last paragraph of this review.) Scratching your head? Lateral thinking puzzles are designed to make you do just that--and wrack your brain for the solutions to these inventive little gems. While the book can be read alone, the puzzles are best when played as a game with a group of friends: one person reads the scenario aloud, and the others try to deduce the answer by asking "yes" or "no" questions. "Is it an exceptionally large sheet of newspaper?" (no), "can the boys see each other?" (no). And while most of the puzzles are fictional, some of the most confounding stumpers are taken from real life. (Can you guess why the buttons on men's clothes are on the right but women's are on the left?) Perplexing Lateral Thinking Puzzles, Paul Sloane's seventh book in the series, is as fresh and clever as the first, and is perfect for anyone who enjoys solving mysteries as much as they enjoy reading them. (Did you figure out that Jim and Joe are on either side of a closed door, with the newspaper slid underneath? Then get ready to take on more than 100 other mind-melters in this entertaining volume.) --Matthew Baldwin
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