RIDDLES: Challenging Brain Teasing Riddles for Kids and Adults, Stimulating Mind Growth for Fun
(Review)
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This audiobook by George Smith contains riddles for every level of ability from beginner to expert that is also a family orientated challenge which is both challenging and amusing. The riddles that are posed can take many forms such as 'What am I?', math or numbers, wordplay, logic, etc and this stops it from getting repetitive and boring and will also challenge the listener in many different ways. The aim of the audiobook is to make you think and in particular test your lateral thinking although there are plenty of logical brain teasers as well and they are presented in a way that is fun and to hopefully draw a laugh.
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As this audiobook has riddles that cater for all abilities and the format being one question after another then it can be done as a group or family activity particularly if the audiobook is played out loud for everyone to hear which adds another dimension to the experience, for instance, the participants could help each other to solve the challenge especially when they get more difficult. It could be a competitive activity with more than one person in which those taking part can try to answer first or see who can answer the most correctly after a round of questions or by the end of the book. It can also be fun to see others struggle to answer a question you could answer easily and you can use other people as a gauge to see how well you have done at answering the questions. It works just as well as an individual activity in which you will not have to wait for others to answer the question before moving on to the next challenge or other people possibly shouting out the answer before you have solved it.
The puzzles are meant to be fun but they are also a great form of learning and developing important mental skills like lateral and logical thinking as well as problem-solving which are useful skills for solving other types of puzzles as well as useful in everyday life. There are math riddles here for those people who find dealing with digits or figures easier to comprehend and solve than the brain teasers that offer worded descriptions and for those who don't like maths as a subject then these math riddles in the way they are presented here could be a way of making the subject of maths more appealing. General knowledge will also be in a way tested and can be acquired from going through the puzzles so this can be very much a learning experience with many benefits aside from ones that specifically relate to puzzles. Memory is also going to be tested as you have to remember all the information that is being given in the question which varies from question to question with some presenting a lot of information that you will have to remember and ponder over in order to solve.
The length of the audiobook is an hour and 21 minutes in total which is relatively short compared to other brain teaser audiobooks but a substantial number of the riddles will likely take a lot of contemplating to figure out so in reality this book will take much longer to get through but this all depends on the ability of the listener of course. If you do need to think over an answer then the audiobook can be stopped or paused to give yourself more or extra time than what they give you on the recording which you are very likely to need unless you are exceptionally good at riddles. It is likely you will also need to relisten to a question to ensure you have heard all the information correctly that is given which is not as ideal as having the book version in front of you in which you can see the whole question written down but putting the recording back so many seconds should be easy enough to do. It is narrated by Robert L Stevens who speaks clearly and does a good job of trying to make the questions sound as interesting and as funny as possible by putting as much enthusiasm as he can into them without being annoying. Those who have a decent vocabulary and literacy level should have no problem understanding what is being described and asked for and it may even help to expand a person's vocabulary further and improve their literacy.
The advantage of this being an audiobook is that you can travel with it and play it on the move be it in the car or while jogging which makes this a possible outdoor activity. It is ideal for situations in which you have time to kill as the brain teasers are meant to be amusing and really engross the listener which should also make the time pass by faster. As the audiobook is meant to be entertaining and amusing then it can put the listener in a good mood and could be suitable for when someone needs cheering up so would be worth keeping it at hand when this situation should occur.
What sets this puzzle audiobook apart is that it teaches the listener how to solve the riddles it contains when the answer is given which is very informative if somebody got the wrong answer or had no clue what the answer may be. It is, therefore, teaching how to think laterally as well as logically which are crucial skills for someone to learn when they want to solve puzzles in particular riddles. A riddle is often about deception and making you think it asking for or describing one thing when in reality it wants or is describing something else so it is always important to pay attention to the wording and look for the double meaning of the words used. The hope is that once you have seen how these riddles work with the easier questions at the beginning of the audiobook and practised them you should be able to identify the tricks and misdirection employed and be able to identify what is really being asked for in order to be able to have a go at the more difficult questions. It can be that you are looking for double meaning when actually the question is being literal and it is asking for exactly what it is describing which can be sometimes difficult to know when the question is literal and when it has another meaning in what it is asking for. A lot of riddle audiobooks or books don't explain the answers and this can leave you very frustrated at how they came to an answer which seems like there has been a massive leap in logic made to get to that answer. A riddle can often, as is the case in this book, to think creatively in order to find the answer which a lot of people will find much more difficult than to think logically and maybe is a skill someone never fully acquires or grasps.
Replayability is difficult to judge as it may come down to how good an individual's memory is and if they can remember the questions of which there are many and the answers to them after not having listened to them in a while. If you have a good memory and would be able to remember the answers and the questions then this would be a one and done sort of activity and to get further use out of it would be to quiz other friends or family members and see if they could do better than you. If you would forget the answers after having not listened to them for a while it could be interesting to have another go at doing the questions and see if you improved at solving them.
The level of difficulty increases as the audiobook goes along by starting with relatively easy riddles for newbies and then building to more difficult ones but there are answers as previously mentioned included to check your answers if you are at a loss. The answers are given after every chapter or every round of brain teasers so it may be an idea to note down all your answers to the questions so you can remember what you have answered and therefore see if they were correct. However, I would avoid the answers to the questions you don't have an answer to for a while because it can be sometimes that the answer to a riddle can come to you after having slept on it or really mulled it over or it just pops into your head and then go check what the actual answer is. It can happen that sometimes there are a series of brain teasers in a row that you don't know the answers to especially with the more tricky questions which can be a very frustrating and demoralising experience but it is a very rewarding and great feeling when you do finally know an answer to one. For beginners to riddles who are brand new to them then once you get past the beginning phase of the audiobook I am not sure it helps that much the practice you get from those early questions with some of the more difficult challenges that come later which can feel like suddenly being dropped in at the deep end but at least it will be explained how the answer came about. There are a variety of different brain teaser types so the difficulty will also depend on how good the listener naturally is at solving these different types and they will likely discover what they are not so good at.
In conclusion, a fun audiobook full of many different types of riddles and I think this would be ideal for a parent in need of an amusing activity that they can do together with their child in which everyone taking part could learn new skills and be tested. It is also suitable for beginners as it starts off relatively easy and allows the listener to work their way to the much more difficult challenges whilst learning how to solve riddles but for an experienced riddle solver the audiobook would probably only be worth it for the challenges towards the end of the book.
