Logic Puzzles

Logic problems have always seemed nigh impossible to me. But I noticed my dad had a giant book of logic problems last year that he was more or less discarding—he has always liked them but he is getting old now and just doesn’t seen to have the brain power to do them anymore—so I decided to take it and genuinely try to solve even one. Well I did and got hooked on them. I have only ever tried any out of that particular book and since it is so huge physically, I wanted to find a smaller one that I can more easily take with me when I go places. I decided to give Puzzle Baron Logic Puzzles a try and I am glad I did!The good things about this book…The physical size and format. I can fit this in my purse and it is not super bulky or heavy so it’s pretty easy to take it around with me. The book easily opens and I do not have trouble filling in any of the spaces or reading the text due to proximity to the spine or any of that. The pages are easy to write on.The organization of puzzles—they are sorted based on ease and based on the “solve rate” of players. I think sorting based on difficulty is standard but I have not seen data on the difficulty of each puzzle in other books. Each puzzle shows the solve rate, the average time the puzzle the puzzle took players to solve, and even the best time it was solved in and the username of the person who solved it. This must come from the website but I have not verified it or looked yet. I found it really interesting to see the percentage of players who solved each puzzle and to compare myself against that—I do not care about the times. I know I would not even be close to the times listed but nonetheless it is interesting to see!If I have one criticism of the book it would just be that the print for the puzzles is very small! I do not have “old eyes” yet but even so I wish the size were just a touch bigger. Most logic puzzles seem to be pretty small font in general because of how much needs to fit on the page but this one seems just a bit smaller than the typical book I see.The only other thing I noticed is that all of the puzzles in this book are six grids. I have seen logic puzzles that have more than six grids but this one does not. To me that is not a huge deal since I am not smart enough to deal with more than six anyway, but someone else might want to have this information. Also, there are no variations or different types of logic puzzles in the book. From start to finish, it’s all six-grid problems. That is also okay by me since those are the ones I like. I only mention it to provide information for anyone reading this review.The book has a very helpful introduction for anyone who does not know how these sort of logic problems work and offers helpful information on some of the nuances within the clues.Overall I recommend this book. I think it seems to be a decent choice for anyone who has not done logic puzzles but is curious and it is challenging enough for those who already understand how these work. I will definitely purchase more puzzle books from Puzzle Baron.

I bought all three volumes so I'll review and post for all three as these books are slightly different.-Volume ONE - Great book. Definitely LOVED it. Started out fairly easy but got harder along the way (puzzles are organized by percentage of users solved as information is given for best time and average which I assume is from their website). By about puzzle 160, I was researching advanced techniques and still got stuck. I actually moved to volume 2 at this point because I wasn't enjoying that much of a struggle.-Volume TWO - Starts out with 3 instead of 5 grid puzzle and slowly moves to harder puzzles and more grids (I really felt this would have been a better volume One as it was much easier than the first). MUCH easier. I was going through many every day as they were only taking about 10 minutes each. Got much trickier about 180 but still VERY enjoyable. Still had Solve Rate, Best Time and Average but was ordered by Average Time which I preferred, not sure why.-Volume THREE - What the hell? First there is only Average Time solve listed which I was fine with but even with the first puzzle, I had to use more advanced techniques than with most of the other volumes (substitutions, mixed pairs, etc.) from the first puzzle forward. I kept looking online to find out what the heck was happening as I breezed through the First and Second volumes pretty quickly. How people can say these are easy is shocking to me as I feel sooo many are missing information to solve them. I am on page 28 and got stumped on at least four of the puzzles with no way to solve except look at the answers for a hint. How people can solve these in 10 minutes is crazy. I even checked the Puzzle Baron forums to see if anyone was having issues but the forums are outdated and Vol. 3 isn't even listed.From the reviews it seems like I am alone in this, but I just can't see how.I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU DO THESE BOOKS WITH VOL. 2 (FIRST), VOL. 1, THEN VOL. 3

I really like this logic puzzle book a lot. The first puzzle took me a while to get the hang of, but once I got into the groove, the second one was a lot smoother. Each puzzle takes me about an hour or so to complete.Overall, I'm very happy with this book. It provides a great mental workout and a satisfying sense of accomplishment with each completed puzzle. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys logic challenges!

The puzzles are well stated, and fun, but the pages are printed in a reduced size, under 6 X 9 inches ( 15cm X 228mm ). Probably about 9 point print. It is almost like reading the fine print on a legal document, and most difficult to write the solution in the box provided. A nice touch is that they give the solve rate, average solve time and the best time. But I will wager that those times were not recorded with the use of this size book. My solution for this will be to tear out each page and scan it, and print it on a full size piece of paper.

Really makes you think. Good social activity but make sure to be nice to each other.

I find these to be difficult but not impossible. Fun to do with a friend.

The earlier puzzles in the book were fine but some later ones were unsolvable because the clues were wrong, or they were solvable but with answers in the back that were wrong. For instance, in one of the puzzles a clue reads “Alondra’s hotel room didn’t cost $200/night”, but the solution indicates that Alondra had the $200/night room. That puzzle was at least solvable but in other puzzles because the clues were incorrect there was no way to reach a solution at all, much less the one shown in the back of the book. So, it was very frustrating. I ended up not doing the last few puzzles because I didn’t want to waste my time anymore than I already had.