A.J. Jacobs knows puzzles—he’s even been a NEW YORK TIMES Crossword answer. Nevertheless, with self-deprecating humor he lets listeners commiserate with his frequent frustration over the most demanding puzzles. That’s good because listeners will be stumped by the audio-exclusive teasers at the end of each chapter. They’re fun—but harder to do on audio. Listeners’ struggles make it even easier to laugh along with Jacobs’s misadventures—such as his effort not to come in last at a jigsaw competition and his unorthodox technique with a Japanese puzzle box. There’s a pdf with puzzles from the print edition and a prize puzzle open until May 3, 2023. Not a puzzler? Jacobs reminds everyone that the NEW YORK TIMES criticized the crossword craze before finally joining it in 1942. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

02/14/2022

“Puzzles are not a waste of time. Doing puzzles can make us better thinkers, more creative, more incisive, more persistent,” argues journalist and avid puzzler Jacobs (The Know-It-All) in this riveting cultural analysis. Showcasing his knack for immersive detail with fascinating takes on crosswords, jigsaws, and secret codes, he makes a convincing case that, beyond helping “stav off dementia” (which, he writes, there’s “mild evidence” for), puzzles can make people more evolved humans by requiring them to adopt “a mindset of ceaseless curiosity about everything in the world.” For centuries, he writes, anagrams have fueled humans’ obsessions with hidden meanings—Galileo loved them so much that he hid his discoveries in anagrammatic poems. And visual puzzles, such as Where’s Waldo, encourage people to question their first impressions and examine their surroundings more closely. Jacobs enriches his narrative with interviews with puzzle designers and devotees, along with accounts of his attending several puzzle tournaments—among them a jigsaw championship in Spain where he proudly placed “second to last.” The inclusion of tools to crack the code to all sorts of puzzles, and a section of original work by famed puzzler Greg Pliska, only add to the infectious charm. A rallying cry for “word nerds” everywhere, this is a delight. (Apr.)

Sprightly, far-reaching.”—The Washington Post

“[A] weirdly fascinating new book . . . a romp, both fun and funny. Jacobs explains, in a way I never could, how at various points in our lives puzzles can save us.”—The New York Times
 
“A.J. Jacobs’s fascinating, hilarious investigation of our human love for puzzles is packed with intriguing real-life stories, information, and research—and he illuminates ways that we might play our way toward solutions for an often puzzling world. I’ll never look at a jigsaw puzzle or a sudoku page the same way again.”—Gretchen Rubin, bestselling author of The Happiness Project and Better Than Before

“As a devotee of crosswords, anagrams, and A.J. Jacobs, I knew I would love this book. What I did not anticipate: The Soviet Camping Puzzle! The Ellis Island Jigsaw! A visit to CIA headquarters! Most puzzle books are all brain; this one has heart. As Jacobs learns with his singular performance at the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship, puzzles bring us together—as families and as Earthlings. Even better, they brought A.J. Jacobs gobs of grade-A fodder for another charming, funny, winning book.”—Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of Fuzz

“Humans are obsessed with puzzles, and A.J. Jacobs is obsessed with figuring out why. Of all the gifts he possesses as a writer, his second-greatest is his ability to make you think and make you laugh at the same time. In these delightful pages, you’ll find a clue about what his greatest gift might be.”—Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife

“A barrel of monkeys’ worth of fun.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A must-read for puzzle enthusiasts of all skill levels.”—Library Journal

“Ridiculously entertaining.”—Booklist

03/01/2022

This multifaceted memoir explores Jacobs's (Thanks a Thousand) personal relationship with puzzles but also discusses the broader history (and controversies) of puzzles. Jacobs is himself a crossword enthusiast, but for this book he branches out to research puzzles outside his wheelhouse (math and word puzzles; Rubik's Cubes; mazes; riddles) and engagingly interviews puzzle experts. He also offers his own theories as to why people love to puzzle and why the English language works so well for word puzzles. This book shines for its interactive format, featuring more than 100 historical puzzles, plus 10 original puzzles created for the book by Greg Pliska (hints and solutions are included). It also offers a challenge: Jacobs has hidden a secret puzzle in the book and says that the first reader to solve it will win a cash prize of $10,000. VERDICT A fun, interactive exploration of the history and hidden world of puzzles. A must-read for puzzle enthusiasts of all skill levels.—Cate Triola

A.J. Jacobs knows puzzles—he’s even been a NEW YORK TIMES Crossword answer. Nevertheless, with self-deprecating humor he lets listeners commiserate with his frequent frustration over the most demanding puzzles. That’s good because listeners will be stumped by the audio-exclusive teasers at the end of each chapter. They’re fun—but harder to do on audio. Listeners’ struggles make it even easier to laugh along with Jacobs’s misadventures—such as his effort not to come in last at a jigsaw competition and his unorthodox technique with a Japanese puzzle box. There’s a pdf with puzzles from the print edition and a prize puzzle open until May 3, 2023. Not a puzzler? Jacobs reminds everyone that the NEW YORK TIMES criticized the crossword craze before finally joining it in 1942. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

2022-02-19
The George Plimpton of thought experiments takes readers on a wide-ranging tour of puzzles, from crosswords to mazes and beyond.

In his latest foray into lighthearted, experiential journalism, Jacobs opens with the thrilling discovery that he’d been used as a clue in a New York Times crossword puzzle—a thrill lessened somewhat by appearing in the hard-to-solve Saturday edition, “proof that I’m totally obscure, the very embodiment of irrelevance.” Undeterred, the author, a puzzle addict whose interests embrace not just crosswords, but also “mazes, secret codes, riddles, logic puzzles,” and other nerdy pursuits, embarked on a quest to find puzzle makers and solvers in dusty warrens, convention centers, and other venues. TheTimes, he discovered, was late in the game when it came to crosswords, having sniffed that they were “too lowbrow, too frivolous.” Under the guidance of the learned but democratically minded Will Shortz, the paper has become the gold standard of crosswords. Throughout, Jacobs ventures theories on how the puzzles sharpen the brain, help us solve real-world problems, and “are an existential grasp at certainty and closure in an uncertain world.” Sometimes they induce despair, as the author’s early encounters with the Rubik’s Cube reveal. He was hardly more cheered after an international jigsaw-puzzle competition in which he was bested by a “man from Uganda who later told me he is color-blind.” Corn mazes, secret codes, chess gambits, the river-crossing problem, and the Tower of Hanoi: Jacobs is refreshingly captivated by every kind of mental challenge, it seems, and his enthusiasm serves this lively—and puzzle-stuffed—book well. The author even proves to be his own riddler, promising that there is a secret puzzle hidden in the book, the first solver of which will receive $10,000: “I figured I couldn’t write a book on puzzles that didn’t contain a secret one itself.”

A barrel of monkeys’ worth of fun for the puzzle addict in the household.