Read the Puzzle. Solve the Puzzles. Get Out Alive.
Colleen and Samuel Quaice are teenagers living in 1897 England. During a visit to Upper Wolverhampton Bibliotheque, they discover a musty book called THE MAZE OF GAMES. Opening the book summons the Gatekeeper, a mysterious skeletal guardian who plunges the Quaices into a series of dangerous labyrinths, populated with myriad monsters and perplexing puzzles.
Only by solving their way through the Gatekeeper's mazes will the Quaice children find their way home. Can you help them escape?
A Wondrous Tome -from the fine folks at- Lone Shark Games
This remarkable tome may in fact exist today as the finest collection of puzzles in the known world. Each chapter includes 13 or more perplexing puzzles, spanning a variety of challenges in mythology, language, mathematics, history, logic, spatial, and more. Most, (not all) the puzzles are very challenging - yet fair, and able to be navigated and solved. Hint and wiki guides exist for those of us who require a further push in the right direction. An outstanding achievement for the author, and a book for all time. Bravo.
The book has so much potential, but fails for what appears to be the lack of a decent editor. Quite simply, the instructions are poor. I believe the puzzle concepts are good, but the instructions are so unclear and convoluted as to make them inaccessible. And I don't mean cryptic. This is not about puzzles that are meant to be unclear as to how to approach them. I'm speaking directly to puzzles that have extensive instructions that are just so poorly written that they can't be understood.
In some cases, the website that purports to offer hints and advice even admits the instructions are really unclear, and that the following guidance is a guess at best.
In other places, the poor English grammar gets in the way of solving the puzzle, such as in one logic puzzle where the use of unnecessary words actually changes the meaning to the point that the cues become self-contradictory. That's a very bad "feature" of a logic puzzle, where all the clues must be absolutely consistent.
As I said, I think the puzzles are probably very good: creative, unique and challenging. However, the author really should have run this through a professional editor for proofreading of grammar, punctuation, word usage and sentence structure to ensure clarity where it was necessary. The puzzles are good, the logic is (it appears) sound, but the grammar gets in the way.
My favorite present I have ever received (thanks hubby). The puzzles are sometimes quite difficult and my brain feels thoroughly worked out after I solve them. I am super glad there are no answers in the book so I don't feel tempted to look because I feel so accomplished after I finish each chapter!
Note this is not for the light or casual puzzle enthusiast. Some of these puzzles I have to put down for a day and come back to with a fresh mind to solve. The instructions for the puzzles are sometimes even puzzling in themselves and take a second read to click. I strongly recommend this for anyone who truly enjoys a challenge.
I think this is THE best puzzle book ever made. Kudos to the brilliant designer on a job extremely well done.
Came to a crashing halt on one puzzle. No hints, no answers, and no way to progress if you fail to solve something. I'm acquainted with the author and keep forgetting to tackle him on this.
This was fun! A cool format, and some of the puzzles were better than others. The overarching meta thing was pretty much impossible for me but still had a lot of fun throughout.
Excellent puzzle series. The main storyline occasionally is a bit annoying and not always reinforcing in the or der of telling.
Still, we're mostly here for the puzzles, which 80-90% are top of the line, varied and solvable if you have some puzzling background. A few of the puzzles were very niche in the information needed, so if your a puzzler who refuses to internet search, they may very well annoy you.
In the end the plot and puzzle themes were enough enmeshed that I was drawn in for some solid puzzling a level of difficulty above Puzzle Pint challenges.
The epilogue puzzle set was less satisfying. Some seemed to require very niche information or were tangled beyond my ability to suss out the solving path. I fully skipped a third of them, but overall well worth the $20 spent (found on ebay) of this classic.