Review: Amusing stories to test all parts of your brain
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 16, 2013
Update on volume III: Still great, but deficient in two respects. First off, six questions are repeated (one entire section of five, plus a single question in another section). Second, too many of the answers give only the bare facts, not a detailed paragraph or two to explain the context.As other reviewers have noted, these are not the usual run of trivia questions. They are short stories, 50 words or so, that contain within them multiple clues to the answer. The writing is seamless, there is no "story problem" feel of lists of arbitrary bits of information. The important data are woven naturally into the paragraphs. It's a disappointment when you happen to know the answer, because the real fun is letting the story soak into your brain, getting the answer in a flash, and (often) having to figure out afterwards what tipped you off. These are mini-detective stories, not tests of your memory for useless information. You solve them with logic, educated guesswork, free association and lateral thinking.The answers are not surprising, in the sense of being the opposite of what you might expect, but they often rely on overlooked but well-known facts, or things that must be true but you hadn't thought about before. The author is not out to trick you, he just lays out what you need and no more. Then he steps back, he doesn't tell you how to think (well, in a few answers he tosses in some advice, I found these mildly irritating and out of character with the book).Another rare and wonderful feature is all of the puzzles are fresh. They are not classic problems dressed up in slightly new clothes, nor ones that have been used a thousand times before. Beyond that, there is an inherent originality to them. These are the product of a dedicated puzzle craftsman, not mass produced items.Of course, not all the questions meet the top quality standard above, but a good many do, say two out of each batch of five. The remaining ones are pretty good attempts. There is a deep humor, a playfulness about the book that enlivens even the weakest questions.I have a few minor quibbles. I would have preferred the questions to be harder. I would have liked to work some out, but they were easy enough that I didn't need the careful clues. The subject matter could have been more varied, some of the sources of material were overused.My biggest gripe is the book takes no advantage of electronic format. It's plain text using default fonts. Five questions in a row, then the questions are repeated with answers. A graphic designer and illustrator who caught the playful spirit of the book could have made it far more appealing visually. Color and pictures could have added another dimension to the fun.There's no reason people should be paging through an quiz e-book, the answers should be linked to the questions, and questions should be indexed by type, difficulty, solved versus unsolved and so on. As it is, if you can't get a question and want to put it aside for a while, you have to use the highlight feature to mark it (which is not the right tool for the job) and be careful not to see the answer accidentally when reading other answers.Hints would be a useful feature. It's sometimes the case that you can work out the general idea of the answer, but you lack a fact to complete it. Some well-thought out hints could help you along without just giving you the answer.None of the complaints should dissuade you from getting or giving this wonderful collection of clever short problems.