The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book: A World Tour of Languages and Alphabets in 100 Amazing Puzzles (Alex Bellos Puzzle Books)

Description

100 wonder-filled word puzzles that thrill and tantalize with the beauty, magic, and weirdness of world language Whether you’re a crossword solver, cryptogram fan, Scrabble addict, or Sudoku savant, The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book is guaranteed to tease your brain and twist your tongue. Puzzle master Alex Bellos begins in Japan, where we can observe some curious counting: boru niko = two balls tsuna nihon = two ropes uma nito = two horses kami nimai = two sheets of paper ashi gohon = five legs ringo goko = five apples sara gomai = five plates kaba goto = five hippos Now, how do the Japanese say “nine cucumbers”?* a) kyuri kyuhon b) kyuri kyuko c) kyuri kyuhiki d) kyuri kyuto Bellos finds the intrigue―and the human element―in a dizzying array of ancient, modern, and even invented tongues, from hieroglyphs to Blissymbolics, Danish to Dothraki. Filled with unusual alphabets, fascinating characters, and intriguing local customs for time-telling, naming children, and more, this is a bravura book of brainteasers and beyond ―it’s a globe-trotting, time-traveling celebration of language. *The word endings depend on shape: Flat things end in -mai and spherical things end in -ko. Cucumbers are long things (like ropes and legs), so they end in -hon. The answer is (a)! 125 B&W illustrations and diagrams Review: Great gift for the brainiacs in your life - I purchased this as a gift for someone who loves puzzles and linguistics and they are enjoying it very much. Seeing them happy makes me happy! Review: Incredible book - unique content - I am obsessed with logic puzzles, but I generally don’t step too far outside of the grid puzzles/recreational math sphere. This book scratches the logic puzzle itch while venturing into a new type of terrain - language! I am no polyglot by any stretch of the imagination, but no outside language skills are needed. This book is challenging, but the majority of the problems can be solved with logic alone (no guessing, and minimal amounts of having to make small leaps). As we go through a huge number of language puzzles, the author also gives background to the etymology and evolution of language (and sometimes numbers) and some other fun facts. For instance, I can now generally determine one of the parents and/or grandparents names of an Icelandic person just by looking at their last name(s). Highly recommend getting this book (preferably in the physical form) if you’re looking for an intellectually stimulating way to spend an afternoon (or 5!). This is the first book of its kind (at least that I’ve encountered) and as someone who goes thru logic books like a child goes through candy on Halloween, a must have.