Shadowman's Twisted Treasury: A Collection of Killer Puzzles

The puzzles in this book are a very interesting mix, with a slight emphasis on word riddles and tricks. There were only about half a dozen that I failed to solve on my own, and for several of these, one of the "steps" in the book got me going towards the answer. The book itself is written as sort of a diary of Shadowman, a fairly cocky puzzle solver who's relating the puzzles he has seen in his travels. The diary keeps a sense of flow to the puzzles, but you can easily skip over that part and just work the puzzles if you want. Each puzzle has "hints" and "steps". The hints give you clues about how to tackle the problem and the steps give you a partial solution. I found the "steps" very useful since several times I was confident that my answer was right until I saw the first step. This sent me back to the puzzle to look again. A couple of times this took me right to the answer but mostly it just told me enough to know that I was off track. Most of the puzzles in the book can be solved from what you're told of the puzzle itself, but on one my lack of even rudimentary knowledge about the music scale did me in. I had to go ask my wife what the notes on the staff were. She lorded THAT over me a for a while. This was a Christmas present from my wife and I'm hoping that she remembers to get me more books like this next Christmas (hint, hint).

I got this book and one of their riddle books, Tower of the Riddle Master : A Riddle Book for my campaigns. This book really rocks. The riddle books just got riddles (good ones though), but this one has riddles and puzzles and a d20 section to make it easy to drop into your campaign. Alot of the puzzles I couldn't figure out by myself even with the hints but Ive now tried out about half a dozen on my players and they were able to get them. The book has two kinds of hints in it that I used with a mystic they had with them so they never got completely stuck. This ones defintely a keeper!

Shadowman was an unexpected treat for me. So many puzzle books are filled with one or two line puzzles that rely on some language or math trick, but not Shadowman. Each puzzle here is an entertaining story where the snarky narrator tells of his exploits and challenges you to see if you could have solved the puzzle. And I do mean challenge! These are really clever and require novel mechanisms to solve them unlike anything I've seen elsewhere. They are serious when they call them a Collection of Killer Puzzles. But fortunately there are hints to help you along (which I must admit I needed once or twice), which is great because you never have to feel frustrated.

Having read and enjoyed a riddle book Quest for the Riddle Stone: A Riddle Book produced by the authors, I decided to pick up their puzzle book to see how it compared. When I first got it, I was uncertain about it because it had a D20 role-playing logo on it, and I hadn't role played in years. However the role-playing aspect, while always there, was a take-it-or-leave it affair, and the puzzles were quite enjoyable. In particular, the puzzles were presented so that you could try to solve them yourself, using a clever system that lets you see if you're on the right track without spoiling the solution. The book is a large format (8 1/2 x 11) book of 128 pages, split roughly into four sections. There's a short introduction to tell you how to use the book, a large narrative section with the puzzles, a hints section and then a role-playing section. The narrative section is split into seven sections, each of which is written as a short story of sorts, told first person by "Shadowman". Shadowman is a wry, self-aggrandizing fellow who presents each puzzle as a sort of "in your face" challenge. For the most part, if you wanted to, you could easily skip over the narrative to get to the actual puzzle. Illustrations in the book vary between none, to obviously computer generated images to extremely nice black and white art. In most cases the art is for flavor more than content. The types of puzzles in the book vary, with word puzzles, cryptograms, logic puzzles, number puzzles, riddles and a number of them that are a mix of these or just too hard to classify. Although some of them are familiar - not the content, just in the way of solving them - most of them require thinking way outside the box. I never did come across a puzzle and say "oh, this again". The variety of puzzles is impressive. Each puzzle has a cross-reference at the bottom to hints, a role-playing page and to what they authors call "steps". A step is a partial solution to the answer. For example, the first puzzle is a kind of cryptogram. Its first step basically asks you if you've figured out if it's a cryptogram or not. The step doesn't tell you the answer but if you hadn't been thinking along the lines of a cryptogram, you would be. The final step for each puzzle is the answer. The hints are similar to steps but instead of checking that you're solving the puzzle, mainly point out things about the puzzle as presented that you otherwise might have missed. Two of the puzzles stand out: the "Monastery" and "Shadowman's Twisted Maze." The Monastery puzzle is a long narrative puzzle where Shadowman goes on a quest to an ancient monastery and is beset by traps and puzzles along the way. Each puzzle encountered has the usual hints and steps, but it's a very interesting way to present the puzzle. The Maze contains the only color page in the book and is set up for role-players. This is the only puzzle in the book that can't be done solitaire. It's a puzzle where you need to solve various small

I picked this up at BenCon in Denver a few years back and just pulled it off the shelf last month. It's written in a narrative style, but the puzzles are also presented so you can use them in a D20 campaign. Now when I pull the book out, my players groan at me - but their eyes also light up a little. I had lots of fun myself working through the puzzles; the book's written so you can try the puzzle yourself and see if you're on the right track for getting the answer, without actually seeing the answer until you're ready. Great fun to read; equally great fun to inflict on players!