The Third Usborne Book of Puzzle Adventures: Combined Volume: The Pyramid Plot / The Invisible Spy / The Emerald Conspiracy

Usborne Puzzle Adventures #16-18

by Justin Somper, Mark Fowler

This combined volume contains 3 titles from the Usborne Adventure The Pyramid Plot, The Emerald Conspiracy and the Invisible Spy. Solve the puzzles to find out what happens and to make sense of the story.

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Justin Somper is a bestselling UK author whose Vampirates books have been translated into over twenty languages. Justin trained in sword-fighting to help him write the fight scenes in the Vampirates series.

Reviews

[Tim Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bit heavy on coded messages, but there are maps and logic puzzles too. Most enjoyable.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I liked this better than the last volume. The Pyramid Plot was a bit convoluted (and we're just supposed to buy that people in ancient Egypt wrote messages in Cockney English?), but the other two were good. I liked the mix of puzzle types, and there were only a couple that required making assumptions about which paths were workable (e.g., can they slide down that rope?). As usual there is some suspension of disbelief required (the smattering of "random" translated words someone has in their notebook just happen to be exactly the words you need to translate this note!) but I don't mind that.

There was one weird timeline issue I had with the last story. The translated papers say that the agent will arrive at 0400 hours on Sept. 24, which is 4:00 a.m., right? But it's bright daylight when they get to the ship. Then Lucy travels on the ship, ends up captured, gets brought on board a different ship, has to make her way to a different room, then solve directions on a map, then radio her compatriots, board their ship, and travel to the island. It says, "Under cover of mist and darkness, they scaled the walls." I took that to mean it was evening by the time they got there. But then after they make their way through the fortress, solve the clue regarding the Spymaster, get rescued by the backup agents, and see the Spymaster get away, we're told her plan will fail because her submarine only works at high tide and high tide isn't until that night and the clock says it's 10:03 a.m., which is the time of the lowest tide on September 24th. So... we're supposed to think that all of that happened in the span of six hours? Why was it bright out at 4:00 a.m. but dark at some point between 4:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. on that same day? It made no sense, so I was sure I was wrong about my conclusion to that final puzzle. (It's not 100% clear that the "1003" on the wall is even a clock.)

In any case, I'm happy to keep working my way through these to pass the time!

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these puzzle adventure books put out by Usbourne. Each book is a story involving some mystery that needs to be solved. Each page give you a picture or series of pictures, comic book style, in which are a lot of visual clues to solve a puzzle. There are often a lot of messages to decode, mazes and hidden picture clues.