A review by devoted_bookworm
Relaxing Brain Games for Adults: 100+ Logic, Math, and Word Puzzles to Help You Unwind by Callisto Publishing

3.0

 Relaxing Brain Games for Adults has a variety of different types of puzzles. At the beginning, there are a few pages with instructions and tips on how to do some of the puzzles. There is also an answer key at the end.

It was good to have different types of puzzles because I could pick and choose what I wanted to work on based on my mood. Some of the puzzle were a good challenge, but some of them felt too easy.

Let’s talk about each puzzle type:

Logic Puzzles- I enjoyed the logic puzzles. They were enough of a challenge that I had to think about it, but they weren’t so hard that they were impossible to complete.

Wordsearches- All of the wordsearches that I have tried were too easy. There wasn’t enough variety of which directions the words were put into the puzzle. All of the answers are straight across or straight down. There were no diagonals or backwards words.

Masyu- At the beginning of the book, there is an instruction page for this puzzle. After I read it, I still didn’t understand how exactly it was supposed to work. I ended up googling how to play masyu. Then I was able to figure out a couple of the puzzles. Unfortunately, there were still some puzzles that didn’t seem to follow the rules and I couldn’t figure them out, but these might just not be a good puzzle for me. I like learning new puzzles, but this one was not explained well enough. I shouldn’t have to seek out additional outside information to be able to even complete the example puzzle.

Calcudoku- The calcudoku were fun puzzles to complete. It was an interesting change to the normal sudoku puzzles. I thought they were a good challenge.

Cryptograms- I enjoyed the Cryptograms and thought they were done well.

Nonograms-The nonograms were way too easy. I wish they had been larger and more of a challenge. I was able to complete each of these in less than a minute.

Sudoku- The sudoku puzzles were good. There were some numbers that took some figuring out. I would say they are in the easy medium to medium range. It would have been nice to have more of a range of difficulties, but I still enjoyed these puzzles.

Crossword Puzzles- The crossword puzzles seem pretty good. There were a couple that I completed quickly on the first pass, but most of them were more challenging. I enjoyed these puzzles.

Cryptic Puzzle- The cryptic puzzles were interesting because they took the other types of puzzles and changed them a little to share a secret message. I enjoyed figuring out what the twist was.

There was a good selection of puzzles in this book. Some felt too easy, but others were just right. I enjoyed spending time figuring these puzzles out.

Thank you to Netgalley and Callisto Publishing for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.