Download or read book The Puzzler written by A.J. Jacobs and published by Crown. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically goes on a rollicking journey to understand the enduring power of puzzles: why we love them, what they do to our brains, and how they can improve our world. “Even though I’ve never attempted the New York Times crossword puzzle or solved the Rubik’s Cube, I couldn’t put down The Puzzler.”—Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project and Better Than Before Look for the author’s new podcast, The Puzzler, based on this book! What makes puzzles—jigsaws, mazes, riddles, sudokus—so satisfying? Be it the formation of new cerebral pathways, their close link to insight and humor, or their community-building properties, they’re among the fundamental elements that make us human. Convinced that puzzles have made him a better person, A.J. Jacobs—four-time New York Times bestselling author, master of immersion journalism, and nightly crossworder—set out to determine their myriad benefits. And maybe, in the process, solve the puzzle of our very existence. Well, almost. In The Puzzler, Jacobs meets the most zealous devotees, enters (sometimes with his family in tow) any puzzle competition that will have him, unpacks the history of the most popular puzzles, and aims to solve the most impossible head-scratchers, from a mutant Rubik’s Cube, to the hardest corn maze in America, to the most sadistic jigsaw. Chock-full of unforgettable adventures and original examples from around the world—including new work by Greg Pliska, one of America’s top puzzle-makers, and a hidden, super-challenging but solvable puzzle—The Puzzler will open readers’ eyes to the power of flexible thinking and concentration. Whether you’re puzzle obsessed or puzzle hesitant, you’ll walk away with real problem-solving strategies and pathways toward becoming a better thinker and decision maker—for these are certainly puzzling times.

Download or read book The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe written by Andrew O'Hagan and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2010 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given as a Christmas present to Marilyn Monroe, Maf the dog provides keen insight into the world of the Hollywood starlet during the last two years of her life.

Download or read book Arsenic and Old Puzzles written by Parnell Hall and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Puzzle Lady embarks on another adventure involving one classic movie and featuring new puzzles by Will Shortz When an elderly boarder at a Bakerhaven bed-and-breakfast drops dead during afternoon tea, there's nothing particularly suspicious about it—except for the Sudoku in his jacket pocket. But when a second body turns up in the window seat and an autopsy shows both men were poisoned with elderberry wine, the Puzzle Lady suspects she's dealing with a cold-blooded killer who for some reason is copying the Cary Grant movie Arsenic and Old Lace, in which two old ladies who run a boarding house poison elderly widowers and bury them in the basement. More murders, more puzzles, and a grave dug in the cellar seem to cement the theory. Ordinarily, Cora would eat a case like this for breakfast, but for once she can't figure it out. And she's not sure if the clues don't add up, or if the much-married Puzzle Lady is just distracted by being involved in her first romantic entanglement in years. Arsenic and Old Puzzles is filled with laughs, mayhem, and fun new puzzles by Will Shortz. Mystery and puzzle fans will find much to enjoy in this latest treat from Parnell Hall.

Download or read book Mental Magic written by Martin Gardner and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2010-01-14 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a collection of math tricks using the magic of numbers in which the marvelous Professor Picanumba can seemingly predict random events in dozens of numerical exercises, along with answers at the end

Download or read book Merl Reagle s Sunday Crosswords written by Merl Reagle and published by Puzzleworks. This book was released on 2000-05-01 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only Sunday crosswords with a" Far Side" sense of humor. Of the top 15 crossword books in the country overall, including The New York Times, five of them are by Merl Reagle. Appearing in newspapers with a total circulation of more than 10 million readers, Merl Reagle's Sunday Crosswords is quickly becoming the most popular Sunday puzzle in America. Called" the best Sunday crossword creator in America" by Games magazine, Merl Reagle has been making crossword puzzles since age six. He had his first crossword for The San Francisco Examiner in 1985. "For freshness, humor and quality of construction, crossword just don't get any better than this." -Will Shortz, Crossword Puzzle Editor, The New York Times "Smart, funny, and challenging! I wish he made more of them for me!" -Erica Rothstein, former Editor-in-Chief, Dell Crossword Magazines

Download or read book Brain Games Large Print Crossword Puzzles Arrow written by Publications International Ltd. and published by . This book was released on 2022-09-22 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brain Games Large Print Crossword Puzzles presents the puzzles you love to solve without putting any strain on your eyes. Puzzle categories span a diverse set of subjects including books, television, language, food and drink, geography, and more. 70 large print puzzles to keep you entertained for hours on end. A terrific buy whether you're a beginning puzzler or a seasoned crossword wizard. Answer key found in the back of the book. Wire bound, 160 pages.

Download or read book USA TODAY Jumbo Puzzle Book 2 written by USA Today and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: USA Today Jumbo Book Puzzle Two is an eclectic mix of brain games, including puzzles such as crossword, logic, sudoku, and much more. This hefty edition features 400 puzzles, so sharpen your pencils and get ready for challenging and exciting fun!

Download or read book Fiction Ruined My Family written by Jeanne Darst and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beautifully paced . . . heartbreaking and hilarious."—USA Today Augusten Burroughs meets Mary Karr: a deeply funny and wickedly entertaining family memoir. The youngest of four daughters in an old, celebrated St. Louis family-- of prominent journalists and politicians on one side, debutantes and equestrians on the other-- Jeanne Darst grew up hearing stories of past grandeur. And the message she internalized as a young girl was clear: While things might be a bit tight for us right now, it’s only temporary. Soon her father would sell the Great American Novel and reclaim the family’s former glory. The Darsts move from St. Louis to New York, and Jeanne’s father writes one novel, then another, which don’t find publishers. This, combined with her mother’s burgeoning alcoholism, lead to financial disaster and divorce. And as Jeanne becomes an adult, she is horrified to discover that she is not only a drinker like her mother, but a writer like her father. At first, and for years, she embraces both activities— and until she can stop putting drinking and writing ahead of everything else, it’s a questionable choice. Ultimately, Darst sets out to discover whether a person can have the writing without the ruin, whether it’s possible to be both sober and creative, ambitious and happy, a professional author and a parent. Filled with brilliantly flawed, idiosyncratic characters and punctuated by Darst’s irreverent eye for absurdity, Fiction Ruined My Family is a lovingly told, wickedly funny portrait of an unconventional life.

Download or read book Puzzlewright Guide to Diagramless Crosswords written by Alex Eaton-Salners and published by Puzzlewright. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete introduction to solving diagramless crosswords, featuring dozens of puzzles! Diagramless puzzles (crosswords where the black squares aren't included, and solvers must figure out where they go) have been a popular crossword variant for decades, but they only appear rarely in newspapers and magazines. This means that there's a shortage of puzzles out there for diagramless fans. But this also causes another problem: if you've never solved a diagramless crossword before, they can seem intimidating, and there aren't a lot of opportunities to practice them. This book offers beginners extra help with solving, while offering plenty of puzzles for everyone. The extensive introductory guide woven through the book will provide step-by-step instruction, and some of the tips and tricks might be new even to veteran solvers. Starting a diagramless puzzle is the most challenging part, so multiple hints for each puzzle will help smooth the way for new solvers, while experienced solvers can go it alone without any hints for maximum challenge or pick and choose as they wish. Puzzles will start out easy and get more challenging, with crosswords of many different sizes and shapes included--and each grid's shape relates to its theme, adding to the solving satisfaction.

Download or read book Quote Acrostic written by Charles Preston and published by Perigee Trade. This book was released on 2001-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preston's Quote Acrostics have thrilled newspaper-puzzle solvers for years...now 55 brain-teasers are available in book form, too!

Download or read book Games Puzzles and Computation written by Robert A. Hearn and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors show that there are underlying mathematical reasons for why games and puzzles are challenging (and perhaps why they are so much fun). They also show that games and puzzles can serve as powerful models of computation-quite different from the usual models of automata and circuits-offering a new way of thinking about computation. The appen

Download or read book Stories I Tell Myself written by Juan F. Thompson and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hunter S. Thompson, “smart hillbilly,” boy of the South, born and bred in Louisville, Kentucky, son of an insurance salesman and a stay-at-home mom, public school-educated, jailed at seventeen on a bogus petty robbery charge, member of the U.S. Air Force (Airmen Second Class), copy boy for Time, writer for The National Observer, et cetera. From the outset he was the Wild Man of American journalism with a journalistic appetite that touched on subjects that drove his sense of justice and intrigue, from biker gangs and 1960s counterculture to presidential campaigns and psychedelic drugs. He lived larger than life and pulled it up around him in a mad effort to make it as electric, anger-ridden, and drug-fueled as possible. Now Juan Thompson tells the story of his father and of their getting to know each other during their forty-one fraught years together. He writes of the many dark times, of how far they ricocheted away from each other, and of how they found their way back before it was too late. He writes of growing up in an old farmhouse in a narrow mountain valley outside of Aspen—Woody Creek, Colorado, a ranching community with Hereford cattle and clover fields . . . of the presence of guns in the house, the boxes of ammo on the kitchen shelves behind the glass doors of the country cabinets, where others might have placed china and knickknacks . . . of climbing on the back of Hunter’s Bultaco Matador trail motorcycle as a young boy, and father and son roaring up the dirt road, trailing a cloud of dust . . . of being taken to bars in town as a small boy, Hunter holding court while Juan crawled around under the bar stools, picking up change and taking his found loot to Carl’s Pharmacy to buy Archie comic books . . . of going with his parents as a baby to a Ken Kesey/Hells Angels party with dozens of people wandering around the forest in various stages of undress, stoned on pot, tripping on LSD . . . He writes of his growing fear of his father; of the arguments between his parents reaching frightening levels; and of his finally fighting back, trying to protect his mother as the state troopers are called in to separate father and son. And of the inevitable—of mother and son driving west in their Datsun to make a new home, a new life, away from Hunter; of Juan’s first taste of what “normal” could feel like . . . We see Juan going to Concord Academy, a stranger in a strange land, coming from a school that was a log cabin in the middle of hay fields, Juan without manners or socialization . . . going on to college at Tufts; spending a crucial week with his father; Hunter asking for Juan’s opinion of his writing; and he writes of their dirt biking on a hilltop overlooking Woody Creek Valley, acting as if all the horrible things that had happened between them had never taken place, and of being there, together, side by side . . . And finally, movingly, he writes of their long, slow pull toward reconciliation . . . of Juan’s marriage and the birth of his own son; of watching Hunter love his grandson and Juan’s coming to understand how Hunter loved him; of Hunter’s growing illness, and Juan’s becoming both son and father to his father . . .

Download or read book The Best of Me written by David Sedaris and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Genius… It is miraculous to read these pieces… You must read The Best of Me.” —Andrew Sean Greer, New York Times Book Review A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A CNN and Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Month For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler’s lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say “give it to me” in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird. But if all you expect to find in Sedaris’s work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms—at long last—with the other. Taken together, the stories in TheBest of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected—it’s often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirder—but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful. Full of joy, generosity, and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris to be called “the funniest man alive” (Time Out New York), The Best of Me spans a career spent watching and learning and laughing—quite often at himself—and invites readers deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time.

Download or read book Search and Find Puzzle Book For Immature Adults written by Mike Bender and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-09 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only brain activity book scientifically proven to make you both smarter and slightly dumber at the same time! Successfully launched on Kickstarter and from the folks behind AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com. Search and Find Puzzles for (Immature) Adults is a humorous twist on the classic search and find puzzles we all remember doing as kids. It makes the perfect brain activity, gag gift, or boredom buster. The book includes 40 unique puzzles from veteran illustrators with 500 + expertly hidden objects such as lederhosen, avocado toast, breast pump, lower intestine, and Socrates-- it might possibly be the most random book ever. This book features: 40 hilarious search and find puzzles that are as equally challenging as they are humorous created by the world's most talented search and find illustrators like Chuck Dillon, Laura Close, Brian Michael Weaver, and MAD Magazine alum, Rich Powell. 500 + hidden objects including shuttlecock, Dadbod, Dee Snider, rotary phone, lederhosen, hypodermic needle, and many, many more. We dare you to find them all. Complete answer key (for cheaters). It makes the perfect boredom buster, quarantine calmer, gag gift, coaster, and fly swatter so pick one up today. Or seven.

Download or read book The Master Theorem Elite written by and published by . This book was released on 2021-03 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Kansuko written by Jonathan Meck and published by Schiffer Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kansuko, the latest twist on the popular Sudoku number game, combines logic and reasoning with simple addition to create an all-new and exciting type of puzzle that challenges and stimulates your mind. Using just the numbers 1 through 9, fill in the empty squares in the three 3 x 3 grids and the sum column to complete the puzzle. The singles digit from the sum of the numbers in each row is placed in the sum column, which also must have the numbers 1 through 9. Featuring more than 100 puzzles and three levels of difficulty, including Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert, this edition also introduces four brand new variations designed to further test your mind and patience.

Download or read book Ultimate Mind Games written by Parragon Books and published by Parragon Books. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ultimate Mind Games is a fantastic compendium that includes 400 puzzles to test your mind, set up over four sections so you can choose the puzzle that fits your mood. Become an all-around puzzler and improve your sudoku, word search, crossword, and brain game skills. The perfect way of improving your vocabulary, mental agility, and problem-solving skills, this puzzle-packed book will provide you with hours of mind-sharpening fun! 400 PUZZLES & SOLUTIONS Hours of fun and entertainment to enjoy, including solutions for each challenge EASY-TO-CARRY Pocket format, small enough to fit in a purse, briefcase, or backpack. Great for on-the-go wherever your travels take you. Just the right size to leave on your nightstand and coffee table VARIETY OF PUZZLES 150 sudoku puzzles, 77 word searches, 79 crosswords, and over 100 mind puzzles! MAKES A GREAT GIFT For the novice to expert this word search book makes a great gift! ON-THE GO POCKET PUZZLE COLLECTION Look for more puzzle books including Extreme word search and Fantastic Word Search