Tim Sole

Nope. Too many of the puzzles are either 1. dependent on the solver knowing the rules of chess, or tertiary maths, or other trivia or 2. can be solved by tedious 'guess & check.' Almost none of the answers explain how one could have solved the problem, but will just say 11" or whatever. And there is no organization, either by type of problem or level of difficulty - maybe a progression would have 'trained' me to be able to solve easy ones first and learn how before more difficult one.

Otoh, if you're some genius like my friend JK and you let me hand this copy over to you for free, you might find a challenge or two. There is a fair variety of kinds of puzzles, so that makes it a book I don't feel bad about passing onwards."… (mer)