Large Print Cryptograms Spiral-bound – Large Print, May 1, 2004

I've picked up a few small cryptogram puzzle books before, but never enjoyed one as much as this. I just wanted something fun to do during pandemic. I liked it so much I went through the book in two months... and we're still in lockdown. Oops.The best thing about this puzzle book is the author's care. After a while you begin to notice that the hints aren't random, like many creators who pick a hint so useless you're surprised they didn't throw in a letter not in the puzzle. These aren't that. You may not think the hint is relevant, but look closer. Very clever, very thoughtful.The puzzles range from easy - I solved 3 in cursive by simply reading them in my head - to pretty tough. Most that I considered hard enough to skip and solve later turned out it was my brain, not the puzzle, that was being tricky that day. Don't give up when you run across a string of too simple or too hard. It's random. There is no increasing difficulty scale.Quotes... I love quotes. You can make the puzzles more difficult by ignoring the author until you finish. It's always a treat to recognize the name, and get the flood of memories associated with it.Humor.. meh. There were great laugh out louds here, but most were just interesting. I found more thoughtful, clever, or wise quotes than I did funny ones. Some were boring. Still much better than some other books.Duplicates... only 6 I found. Not bad for almost 650 quotes!The paper quality is top notch. It doesn't bleed through, you can erase perfectly. The white is bright.There is plenty of room to write above the line.There is space on each page to turn your cryptoquote book into a mini-journal or to-do list as you're working. That came in handy for me, since I tend to think of things to do while I'm puzzling.I enjoyed the cleverness of having a separate section for a quote of the day. It gave a little something extra to look forward to.

I love these! Nice large print with hints in the back of the book. Spiral makes it easy to write on back pages.

My 102 year old mother loves to work on Cryptograms! Nice large print and spiral binding to fold book while solving the puzzles.

Before buying this book, I'd completed two other books of cryptograms by Kim Steele: Cryptograms: 269 Entertaining and Enlightening Cryptoquote Puzzles and Cryptograms: 269 Cryptoquote Puzzles from History's Most Influential People. By the way, I liked both of these, which were free of errors, enjoyable and mostly do-able.What I like so far about this book is:• The spiral binding that lets the big book lie flat, or folded back on itself, so you can work either side without awkwardness of positioning.• In addition to providing all the answers to the puzzles, there is a "hints" section consisting of one hint per puzzle (I prefer two, but so far it's not been a problem.)• The authors are good writers, and explain the book and the cryptogram process really clearly.• That each cryptogram includes the author as part of the puzzle (I often find the author name to provide good clues to solving a puzzle).The authors say that content thread throughout the book is humor. The book is divided into two sections. In the the first, there are 235 puzzles that are the standard fare: quotes about a wide variety of topics, from a wide variety of people. The second has 366, one for each day of the year, plus Leap Day. The author of any given quote was born on that same date. That is, the author of the May 30 quote was born on May 30. It's a clever concept. Some of the clues for this section are a little different than I've ever seen. Many are the usual "T = M" format, but some are quirky: "Three words end with ING." Three clues in one. Fun little twist.The only thing I'm not wild about is the line spacing of the puzzles. I think there should be a little more room over each line, where you write your answer. Also, even though I need my glasses to do these, I find the smaller size font of other books to be easier to parse.I've just begun to tackle this hefty volume of puzzles, and expect that—with its over 600 cryptograms—it will be my companion for quite some time. I hope I will continue to find it free of typos! So far, so good. I'll update this if I find an error.

Covers monotonous! Puzzles are great! Love cryptograms!

This is a really nice book. The print is nice and big, I like that it's spiral bound, the paper is nice and thick. I haven't had any bleeding through when using a gel pen. I would recommend this one.

So many things make this book fun: little hints that are just enough of a nudge, white strong quality paper, 2 different sections, the last 365 puzzles are quotes on that author’s birthday, not super hard or super easy but nice middle ground, and sooooo many puzzles in one place! I’d definitely buy more versions of this book!

Excellent size large print. Easy to read/work puzzle.