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people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #83,815 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★★
I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU DO THESE BOOKS WITH VOL. 2 (FIRST), VOL. 1, THEN VOL. 3
I bought all three volumes so I'll review and post for all three as these books are slightly different.
-Volume ONE - Great book. Definitely LOVED it. Started out fairly easy but got harder along the way (puzzles are organized by percentage of users solved as information is given for best time and average which I assume is from their website). By about puzzle 160, I was researching advanced techniques and still got stuck. I actually moved to volume 2 at this point because I wasn't enjoying that much of a struggle.
-Volume TWO - Starts out with 3 instead of 5 grid puzzle and slowly moves to harder puzzles and more grids (I really felt this would have been a better volume One as it was much easier than the first). MUCH easier. I was going through many every day as they were only taking about 10 minutes each. Got much trickier about 180 but still VERY enjoyable. Still had Solve Rate, Best Time and Average but was ordered by Average Time which I preferred, not sure why.
-Volume THREE - What the hell? First there is only Average Time solve listed which I was fine with but even with the first puzzle, I had to use more advanced techniques than with most of the other volumes (substitutions, mixed pairs, etc.) from the first puzzle forward. I kept looking online to find out what the heck was happening as I breezed through the First and Second volumes pretty quickly. How people can say these are easy is shocking to me as I feel sooo many are missing information to solve them. I am on page 28 and got stumped on at least four of the puzzles with no way to solve except look at the answers for a hint. How people can solve these in 10 minutes is crazy. I even checked the Puzzle Baron forums to see if anyone was having issues but the forums are outdated and Vol. 3 isn't even listed.
From the reviews it seems like I am alone in this, but I just can't see how.
I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU DO THESE BOOKS WITH VOL. 2 (FIRST), VOL. 1, THEN VOL. 3
May 2017 · Books · verified purchase