Lame brains need not apply

Most of the puzzles can be worked out in your mind, if your mind is up to it. Some of them are easier (relatively) if armed with matches, dominoes, playing cards and certainly pen and paper. Scissors, dice and a ruler might help too. Fortunately, all the solutions are printed at the back of the book, though if you’re still trying to puzzle it out after looking up the answer, well that’s not a good sign.

Things get under way in fun fashion with a collection of 19 early challenges from throughout history. Three of these are Before Christ, with a Sumerian Riddle from circa 18th century BC. This is short and sweet – “There is a house. The blind enter it and then come out seeing. What is that house?” There is also the fabled “Riddle of the Sphinx” from circa 5th century BC – “What is it that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three legs in the evening?”

Well, if we can’t outsmart ancient Sumerians and Egyptians it may not say much for the evolution of mankind, though these ancient peoples did leave the world a number of technological and cultural contributions such as the first wheeled vehicles and erecting a few pyramids here and there.

Doctor Gareth Moore’s selection of conundrums then runs through the ages to the Victorian and Edwardian eras before arriving at today’s teasers. However, crosswords and sudokus are noticably omitted because there are countless examples to be found elsewhere. The majority of the chosen puzzles are from early 20th-century books, and thus this Penguin includes conversion charts to navigate through pre-decimal currency and imperial measurements.

Also, some light editing has removed any now-irrelevant asides, or sometimes to excise outdated attitudes or references to the world. Very occasionally parts of a puzzle have been chopped out if it would not be solvable to the modern reader, for instance reliance on outdated vocabulary or long-forgotten units. But the meat of the riddle remains.

The modern brain-twisters are a selection of the World Puzzle Federation’s “Grand Prix” competitions for 2016 and 2017. This tournament brings together competitors from around the world to discover the year’s best brain over a wide range of puzzles and across several rounds. Editor Moore has selected from the “casual” rounds of the tournaments, so there should be a good chance of looking good against the world’s elite.

Here then are anagrams, word squares, paradoxes, magic squares, palindromes, graffiti, conundrums and charades involving animals, birds, trains, ships, buns, eggs, bankers, coins, mathematics, geometry and much else.

In this reader’s opinion they’re mostly generally quite difficult, but racking your brains out for a while does have stimulatory benefits even if you do end up feeling like a complete bimbo.

And here’s a possibility for the cheats among us. Organise a party for friends, casually introduce your Penguin book and pretend you only just bought it, then set some puzzles for which you have sneakily looked up the answers beforehand. Dazzle your friends with your problem-solving skills, creativity, memory and ability to adapt to tricky challenges. Blow their minds, don’t feel guilty.

Postscript – We can’t leave readers dangling, so the answer to that Sumerian Riddle is “School”. And to “Riddle of the Sphinx” – “Man: he crawls as a child, walks upright in his prime and uses a cane in his old age.” Quite simple really, when you think about it.

Second postscript – Intrigued, we investigated further about that “Riddle of the Sphinx”. Here is what the World Book tells us: “The Sphinx «sfihngks» was a mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head of a human, falcon, or ram. The Sphinx is found in both ancient Egyptian and Greek mythology. In Egyptian myth, the Sphinx was more of a symbol than an individual entity. It was a guardian figure, the protector of the pyramids, and the scourge of the enemies of Re, the sun god. It also represented the pharaoh and the pharaoh’s divine power. Sometimes the face of a carved or painted sphinx was meant to resemble a particular pharaoh.

“In Greek mythology, the Sphinx was a monster. Some accounts note that it had the body and tail of a lion, the face of a woman, and the wings of a bird. It was an offspring of Echidna and Typhon, who also bore such other monsters as the Hydra, the Chimera, the many-headed dog Orthus, and the nasty Gorgons.

“In the story of Oedipus, the goddess Hera sent the Sphinx to plague the people of the ancient city of Thebes. This was punishment for an ancient crime, possibly the failure to atone for the crimes of a former king of Thebes. The Sphinx sat perched on a mountain cliff nearby the ancient city. The creature guarded Thebes with a riddle that she had learned from the Muses. Each time a traveler failed to solve her riddle, she devoured them, effectively preventing anyone from leaving or entering the city.

“The riddle? ’What being has four legs, then two, and then three?’ Some accounts write it, ’What has four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?’ After many people guessed incorrectly and were killed, the king of Thebes announced that he would give the kingdom to anyone who could solve the riddle. The road past Mount Phicion, where the Sphinx awaited her victims, was strewn with the bones of people who had failed to find the right answer. Eventually, Oedipus, fleeing Corinth, solved the riddle. He answered, ’Man, who crawls on all fours as a baby, then walks on two legs, and finally needs a cane in old age.’ Upon hearing the correct answer, the Sphinx jumped from the cliff to her death. The plague of Thebes was lifted.”