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Entertain Your Brain: More than 850 Puzzles!
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| List Price: | $14.95 |
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Product Description
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #59714 in Books
- Published on: 2007-08-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 256 pages
Customer Reviews
Many bad puzzles
Although there are a lot of good puzzles in this book, it also is riddled with way too many bad puzzles. These fall into three categories:
Easy arithmetic problems that can be solved with a sixth grade knowledge of mathematics. For example: page 78 - The ratio of 3/7 to 4/9 is which of the following? If you know about ratios, and how they work (the first number is divided by the second) you quickly get the answer: 27/28
Problems with WRONG answers! Example: page 77 - You drive a three wheeled car 50,000 miles, and rotate the spare tire with the other three tires so that all four tires get the same amount of wear. How many miles of wear does each tire accumulate?" The book's answer is 12,500 miles. The correct answer is 37,500 miles.
Problems which depend on having highly specialized knowledge to solve, rather than depending on one's ability to think. Example: page 79 - a professor claims to have discovered a new way to enhance growth. He presents two house flies of different size as evidence, which were both very small when they emerged from their pupae. He claims the larger fly grew twice as fast because it was fed on his invention. How can you tell he is lying? Answer: House flies do not grow, they are born full size. If you are a PhD biologist, you would probably know this. If you aren't - well, you'll never solve this problem.
This book needs a lot of editing. The examples above were taken from just 3 adjacent pages and are fairly typical of the whole book. There are far better puzzle books available.
Stimulation complete!
I travel a lot for work, so I need to keep myself occupied on flights, etc. What better way than to stimulate my thirst for knowledge? It made the time fly by.
How can fans find this book?
The cover of this book tells one NOTHING about who wrote it. I happened onto it through a puzzler friend who knows I am a fan of Terry Stickels. It is a great compilation of some of the best and most interesting puzzles around, and people who have favorite puzzle writers will never find this book. I agree with the other review I saw--why would you put the EDITORS names on the front, and not the authors???
