Conundrum: Crack the Ultimate Cipher Challenge

by Brian Clegg

**'Title of Most Fiendish Book goes to Crack the Ultimate Cipher Challenge by the ever-excellent science writer Brian Clegg.' Daily Mail, Books of the Year** The ultimate trial of knowledge and cunning, Conundrum features 200 cryptic puzzles and ciphers. The solutions link throughout the book – so you need to solve them all to get to the final round.  With a focus on ciphers and codebreaking, Conundrum contains twenty sections, each built around a specific subject from music to literature, physics to politics. To take on Conundrum you need good general knowledge and the ability to think laterally. But if you need help, there are plenty of hints to point you in the right direction. Whether you attempt to crack it alone or work in a team, Conundrum will challenge you to the extreme.Can you take on Conundrum and win? There's only one way to find out…

332 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 6, 2019

About the author

Brian's latest books, Ten Billion Tomorrows and How Many Moons does the Earth Have are now available to pre-order. He has written a range of other science titles, including the bestselling Inflight Science, The God Effect, Before the Big Bang, A Brief History of Infinity, Build Your Own Time Machine and Dice World.

Along with appearances at the Royal Institution in London he has spoken at venues from Oxford and Cambridge Universities to Cheltenham Festival of Science, has contributed to radio and TV programmes, and is a popular speaker at schools. Brian is also editor of the successful www.popularscience.co.uk book review site and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Brian has Masters degrees from Cambridge University in Natural Sciences and from Lancaster University in Operational Research, a discipline originally developed during the Second World War to apply the power of mathematics to warfare. It has since been widely applied to problem solving and decision making in business.

Brian has also written regular columns, features and reviews for numerous publications, including Nature, The Guardian, PC Week, Computer Weekly, Personal Computer World, The Observer, Innovative Leader, Professional Manager, BBC History, Good Housekeeping and House Beautiful. His books have been translated into many languages, including German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Turkish, Norwegian, Thai and even Indonesian.

Reviews

[Karl Drinkwater · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good thing about this book is the variety of puzzles. Some are easy enough that I gained (perhaps false!) confidence; some required time and thought; some required clues; others required me moving on! I didn't crack the overall puzzle but did have fun along the way.

There are a range of categories, and it brought to mind the Kit Williams' Masquerade book I loved as a child, but written for adults and amateur sleuths.

I consider myself as having a good all-round knowledge, thanks to studying both arts and humanities at university, teaching information science ... and being an author. (You wouldn't believe some of the stuff I have to research!) But I think if you have patience and persistence and a few good reference books, you could go even further than me. I think the book works best when you do it slowly. Maybe a puzzle a day. Let them sit in your mind until you gain insight. Then it's a pleasurable test of your mind, and more fun than trying to rush through all the puzzles at once. A marathon rather than a sprint.

Enjoy!

[Leslie Nyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frustrating at times.

The book is about ciphers. But there is much questions that is about “trivia”. That has nothing much (maybe something, but the way I see, unless you know funny chemical/ molecular names, or what events was previously in the Olympic Games). The fact that you need to solve everything and that everything is connected makes the puzzles somewhat difficult to solve.

The topics are wide and forms interesting topics to know about. But I think it’s mostly like trivia that is interesting to know.

The only way to know your answer is correct is to submit online. That is, in my opinion, difficult. Buying a book should be self contained. At least most all answers “checkable”. Much like the first half of the book did. The second half is deviously strange, especially the last chapter, sometime it’s “character” or “number” or “word” which I am not too certain whether it makes a difference to the final answer.

The website has a disclaimer that they reserve the right to ignore your replies is it deemed incomplete. That absolves them the liability to respond to any answer submitted.

Right now, as consolation, they have added a pay for hints model. You can now pay £4 for 5 hints.

For me, I have completed the book as best as I can. The checks check out. (Except for the final chapter) that does not have any method for knowing whether I am doing right or wrong.

I am frustrated, and will stop here. I don’t think I want to pay for the hints.

I am trying to find people who have read this book and would like to share ideas, but perhaps there is lack of interest. If anyone wants to share something, I welcome collaboration.