The Essential Book of Japanese Puzzles and How to Solve Them

This book includes a bunch of Sodoku (old hat though this had a good variety, Kakuro which I had rarely done but has been around for a while, and Hanjie which was completely new to me. The Hanjie puzzles are especially fun as you use logic to fill in the squares to make a picture. One of the really nice things about Hanjie is that you can be off a tiny bit and still get the picture mostly correct. This is definitely different from most puzzles where you have to be perfect. My complaint about this book is that the pages are small and the puzzles have very wide margins making them very small. Trying to do a 25x25 Hanjie grid with very small numbers and very small squares is unnecessarily hard on the eyes - they should have stretched out the puzzles to use most of the page.

This is a very nice book with Sudoku, Kakuro, and Hanjie puzzles all in one book. It's made up of much nicer paper to work on than the Sun Telegraph Griddlers books. It would be a great book for beginners, with detailed instructions on how to solve each kind of puzzle. Experienced puzzlers, though, may not be happy with the easiness of the puzzles. Definitely for beginners!

This is a great little book to take along anywhere, and pull out when you have a few minutes. It gives a nice taste of the three kinds of puzzles, and they are all good brainteasers.