Challenging Word Games

Challenging is certainly an accurate way to describe most of the puzzles in this book. I am a veteran puzzler and while the first set was rather easy, I found the later ones to be rather hard. However, most of the puzzles could eventually be solved if you put in a great deal of time and effort. There are ten categories of puzzles and they appear in the following order. *) Circle search - these are traditional word search puzzles. *) Triple play - these are three part problems, where the first two parts are each the definition of a word and the third part is the definition of a word constructed from the answers to the first two parts. *) Reel challenge - these problems have a known phrase at the beginning and a known phrase at the end. In between them there is an unknown phrase where the first section completes the first phrase and the second section is the start of the last phrase. All phrases are related to movie history. *) Half & Half - each problem is an 8-by-8 grid containing three-letter sequences. The goal is to create a series of six-letter words by combining two of the three-letter sequences. *) Chain letters - in each puzzle, you are presented with three empty vertical segments with the same number of spaces. For each cell of the segment, there are two letters on the left and two on the right. The goal is to select the proper letters on the sides so that messages appropriate to the theme of the puzzle are written out from top to bottom. *) Missing links - in these puzzles, a figure is created having an internal square made of the boundary of a 4-by-4 grid. Each corner of the grid is filled with a letter. Attached to the corner is a four segment diagonal sequence with the end letter included. The goal is to put letters in each empty cell so that the sequences are a word when read forwards and backwards. *) Quotables - in these problems you are given a quote and then a choice of four possibilities for who said it. *) Now you see it - in these puzzles, you are given a short story several paragraphs in length. Your goal is to find all sequences of letters that make a word consistent with a specific theme such as colors. *) Spellbinders - in these puzzles, you are given a square grid and a set of letters matching the number of rows. The goal is to place the letters horizontally in each row of the grid to make words. *) Mystery maze - in these problems, you are given a 5-by-5 grid where each cell contains a letter. Your goal is to find a certain number of words specific to a theme by following the letters vertically, horizontally or diagonally. Solutions to all of the problems are included at the end. Many of these puzzles stumped me, particularly the quotes. My score in that area was probably lower than that due to random chance. Most of the quotes appeared to match the thoughts we would ordinarily associate with one of the incorrect options.