Thinky Books Gift Guide

Christmas is right round the corner and all of us at Thinky Games have put together a list of wonderfully thinky books that you can gift your friends and loved ones. If you’re looking for other thinky options, check out Matt’s toys gift list or Corey’s tabletop games gift list!

Blaž Urban Gracar, a multidisciplinary Slovenian artist is the brains behind LOK. The premise of LOK is simple, find keywords (eg. “LOK”) and use their powers (eg. “Shade any one block”) to help you complete the puzzle.

Blaž follows up with Abdec, a devilishly difficult puzzle book in which the mysterious language of the “Abb” must be deciphered through packing puzzles with rather abstract symbols. Figure out what the Abb are saying, and how they are saying it — the very last copy of this scanned, partially-burnt book is now in your hands.

Alex Bellos brings together several Japanese puzzle heavyweights in Puzzle Ninja — from the godfather of Sudoku to the winner of the World Puzzle Championships to challenge players with many of the best puzzles these enigmatologists have to offer. Dive in, and immerse yourself into the beauty of each lovingly hand-crafted puzzle.

Ben Orlin, a mathematician and teacher, brings us Math Games with Bad Drawings. Exactly what it says on the tin, this easy-to-learn but difficult to master treasure trove of math puzzles lets us truly dig deep into math in a way that’s fun and engaging.

Ah, Sudoku. The age old classic Japanese deduction-by-numbers puzzle game. In The Art of Sudoku, you’ll find Sudoku puzzles — but also the art of sudoku, design and aesthetics behind the game, and sudoku variants beyond the usual you see in the Sunday morning paper.

With an unassuming cover, don’t assume anything about The Librarian’s Almanaq by Roy Leban — it’s full of logic puzzles that incorporate legacy elements of board games (eg. ripping pages). As an interconnected suite of ten unique puzzles, slowly watch as the answers reveal themselves to you.

Have you always wanted to be an alchemist? Well, look no further than The Book of Rituals — a lore-rich book about solving puzzles to obtain magical powers. Use both the tie-in mobile application and a pencil to find your way through. Maybe the friends we made were the puzzles we solved along the way.

In The Cypher Files, you play as a member of the secret international agency C.Y.P.H.E.R, crack ‘unsolvable’ code-based cases by solving puzzles and escaping virtual escape rooms. As people begin to vanish under mysterious circumstances, pit your wits against the clock to find the perpetrator before it’s too late.

The late Martin Gardner is a veteran mathematician whose work in the popularization of popular math for Scientific American for nearly three decades has made him a beacon of knowledge. Now, his final published book collates a swathe of problems from the realms of physics, probability, topology, and chess, among others. Regardless if this is your first time, or if you’ve been doing extrapolations in your sleep — The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems is the book for you.

When Martin Gardner says of this work, “The most original, most profound, and most humorous collection of recreational logic and math problems ever written,” you know you have a gem of a puzzle book in your hands. By Raymond M. Smullyan, What is the Name of This Book: The Riddle of Dracula and Other Logical Puzzles tackles puzzles within the realm of logic and set theory. Will you be able to figure out the name of this book?

M.C. Esher would be proud of Rami Hansenne’s Daedalian Depths, an enigmatic puzzle book that travels deeper into an otherworldly labyrinth that is constantly shifting. If you choose to enter the maze, remember: “This is a mind twisting book you could read in a few minutes, but if you want to solve the mystery, prepare to spend several hours poring over the text and illustrations.”

Mike Selinker and Thomas Snyder are your guides in Puzzlecraft, an updated collection of tips and tricks in making all sorts of logic puzzles. If you like solving puzzles, but have always wanted to make puzzles of your own — look no further than Games’ guide for the curious creator mind.