[New post] Sherlock Holmes – Escape Room Puzzles: a (brief) book review
Jamie Richardson posted: " This is going to be a rather brief post. As I suspected when I wrote my last review, I did not make it to the end of this week's book offering Sherlock Holmes - Escape Room Puzzles. This is the first book of my non-resolution Christmas book pile I ha"
This is going to be a rather brief post. As I suspected when I wrote my last review, I did not make it to the end of this week's book offering Sherlock Holmes - Escape Room Puzzles. This is the first book of my non-resolution Christmas book pile I have not finished. Part of me feels bad about not getting all the way through it, but knowing how much time I spent on the part of the book I did read, it would have taken me weeks to get through. With the last two books in my Christmas pile and a growing collection of other books to read, I decided quickly I was not going to finish it. Even so, I think I have read enough to give a quick review.
My next book choice is This is Improbable, which I am assuming is about maths or science, but I have yet to check the blurb. Before this, let me tell you a little about the first part of a puzzle book.
Sherlock Holmes - Escape Room Puzzles
My rating:
I went to an escape room on my stag do and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. This book does its best to replicate the fun of the escape room, and while it does not have the hands-on element of an actual escape room, it does come close to the intellectual challenge.
Split into sections, each of which needs solving as a whole before moving on to the next, the book consists of a series of increasingly cryptic puzzles to solve ranging from Morse code to Mozart. If you get stuck, the book includes a series of clues from hard through to easy, followed of course by the answers to check your working (or cheat if you need to…).
What Ireally liked
The puzzles were challenging but solvable, and while some of them were laborious to finish (the Mozart puzzle in particular took far too long for the actual payoff), they were mostly enjoyable too.
The book is very well illustrated to both complement the text and most of the time form parts of the puzzles.
The less good bits
While the puzzles were solvable, at times you are expected to solve puzzles you don't even know are to be solved. The final solution to the first section for example is a number, but at no point in the book does it tell you this, and the numbers are so deeply hidden within the puzzle it is nearly impossible to spot without the clues.
Summary
Sherlock Holmes is a challenging puzzle book which I would have spent a little more time on if I did not have more books to be working through.
Who should read this book? Anyone looking to keep the little grey cells ticking over (sorry, wrong fictional detective) will enjoy this book, just be prepared to think very much outside the box.
Have you had a go at this puzzle book or something similar? Did you find yourself sneaking a look at the clues? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
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