402 Lockdown Word Puzzles (Paperback) | Released: 09 Aug 2020

Progressive increase in difficultyThis book starts you off slow. In the first few chapters, you will be looking for fewer than 5 words that feature a unique sequence of letters somewhere within their length. This will help you tune your pattern recognition skills to the more difficult puzzle challenges that await. As you progress from chapter to chapter, and riddle to riddle, you will have to develop and exercise new skills - for example, the ability to think laterally (for example, the sequence of letters *CKF* appears in the common word *jackfruit*, but this is far from obvious when you have the whole dictionary of words scrolling mentally in your head) and the ability to remember obscure Scrabble words that you might have encountered once in the distant past, so that you can find every single word that you are required to, by a given puzzle. After all, striving for perfection is what will keep you coming back, again and again, to these layered word puzzles.No prior experience requiredYou do not need to be a word game veteran to solve and enjoy this book. One reason for this is that the difficulty ramps up gradually. In addition, especially in the later chapters, you can always solve part of a puzzle (and find a few of the many words you are tasked with finding) even if you find the format, as a whole, difficult. Finally, this book doubles as a set of puzzles and a guide book. In case a particular puzzle is too hard to solve, you can just look at the answers, and use those to reverse engineer the solution methods, and get better at the riddles in the next chapter. Finally, solving this with friends is a great way to use the power of multiple minds to attack even the most intractable problem.Better than social media, if you want to while away timeWasting time is easy, but doing it productively is hard. Solving word games (like the ones in this book) is good for your mind, and is probably more fun than scrolling endlessly through your Instagram feed (opinions may vary). So, the next time you have a long journey and are stuck without Netflix, try this book out! We might not have an intuitive interface or personalized recommendations, but your brain will like us better.Can be attempted at any time, at any location, for any length of timeUnlike many other pastimes, enjoying this book does not require you to make a large number of preparations. All you need is access to the book, the willingness to challenge yourself, and perhaps some pen and paper to doodle your guesses on - and you are good to go! You do not even need to solve a complete chapter or riddle at one go. You can leave it partly complete, and go and deal with life. When you're back, the puzzle will still wait for you, and be as infuriatingly close to revealing all its secrets as it was when you left it. Always something to learnThis book teaches two main types of things: functional skills and vocabulary databases. The former are more obvious - as you work through the puzzles that are graded to get progressively harder, you become better at making connections that you might not have, and you will see yourself being able to pluck the correct answers out of thin air. The latter skill is something that you will absorb in the later chapters, when you read through the list of words you had missed.Intelligence Quotient ImprovementSolving word game puzzles in a language you are familiar with (in this case, English) is very good for your mental agility overall, and can either increase your intelligence level or make sure that your brain cells do not lose their power.