ladyconsumer's Full Review: Pierre Berloquin - 365 Exercises For The Mind
I enjoy working on puzzles - of almost any variety. Mostly I like word puzzles and number puzzles. I think that solving puzzles is an excellent way to keep our brains healthy. Even if, ultimately, we don't solve the puzzles, just the act of trying to solve them, seems to be a good way to stretch our brains' power.
365 Exercises For The Mind by Pierre Berloquin contains 365 pages of puzzles, of five different types, in three difficulty levels. The five types of puzzles are numbers, words, logic, concentration, and creativity. The creativity puzzles come in three different varieties: verbal, logical, and practical. The three difficulty levels are called "child's play", "perplexing", and "baffling". To be honest, the child's play puzzles stump me occasionally. And sometimes the baffling ones are no trouble for me. So I'm not sure I really believe their rating system.
So what's the order of this book? There is none, from what I can tell. It's not like the puzzles are separated by type, or by difficulty level, they're all mixed together. Which works out fine for me, but others will find that annoying. There's simply no easy way to find all of the perplexing logic puzzles, for instance.
Let me also point out that, despite the book's title, there are more than 365 puzzles here. I know this, because there are exactly 365 puzzle pages, and some pages contain more than one puzzle, yet no puzzle spans more than one page. So I don't know exactly how many puzzles there are, but it's something more than 365. Why are there 365 pages? Well, I guess Berloquin thought he'd be cute, and give us one page per day, for an entire year. It doesn't say that anywhere, mind you, I'm just guessing here. A further clue is that on the top of each page is a day of the week, starting with Sunday. Absolutely no mention is made as to why the days are listed there. Again, I'm guessing he wants us to start this book on a Sunday, and work one page a day for a year. Well, too bad. When I get in a puzzle-solving mood, I don't stop at just one page!
So when you do start a puzzle, how do you know which type it is, and which difficulty level? Well, Berloquin doesn't make this determination easy. In fact, I hate the way he designates the puzzles. Each puzzle has a little picture on the top left. With five puzzle types, and three difficulty levels, there are 15 little pictures used to designate the puzzle type and level. 15 pictures that in no way look that what they're supposed to represent. So, if you really want to know what you're dealing with, you have to refer to the grid at the front of the book showing all of the pictures and what they mean. For instance, a child's play numbers puzzle is represented by a round face, inside a triangle. The perplexing numbers puzzle is a round face in a square. Word puzzles are represented by pentagon-shaped smilies and the only difference between the difficulty levels is the mouth - which goes from smiling, to a straight line, to a frown as the puzzles get harder. The concentration puzzles are represented by a really odd picture - don't ask me what it's a picture of - and the only difference between the difficulties is the level of shading on the picture's background. If it were my book, I'd use a number to represent a number puzzle, and a letter to represent a word puzzle. Something easy, not something that's impossible to memorize.
Of course what really matters in the puzzle book are the puzzles. And the answers, of course. In this case, I do enjoy most of the puzzles. After a while you find that the same theme is repeated over. There are several puzzles, for instance, of the following type:
Complete this equation using the numbers 1,2,3,8, and 9
____ + ____ - ( ____ X ____ ) / ____ = 7
I will admit that it took me several minutes to solve that puzzle, and really don't agree with its "child's play" designation.
But, here's a word puzzle they call "baffling" yet I solved it instantly:
Make a word from the letters below, using each letter at least once. One letter must connect to another by a being adjacent to it, either across, up and down, or diagonally.
O
M N T
Y
See the comment section for the answers.
The logic puzzles are of the variety I'm sure you've seen before - someone has six sons. John is older than Allen. Allen is younger than Tim, Tim likes to play with trains, Sam has six toes. Allen is taller than Sam etc, etc, etc, and then they ask a question like what color eyes does Sid have. I'm sure you've seen puzzles like that. I find them all pretty simple, and, frankly, boring. All it takes is a pencil to write the facts down in a logical order and the answer is usually clear.
Overall, I enjoy most of the puzzles in this book. The instructions are always clear, and they usually give examples to further explain. The solutions, at the end of the book, listed by page number, are also well-written, and clear. But I think the organization of this book is ridiculous. And the difficulty designations are a little "off". Still, if you like puzzle books and don't really care about how they're organized, this is a decent book.
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