The Total Brain Workout: 450 Puzzles to Sharpen Your Mind, Improve Your Memory & Keep Your Brain Fit Paperback – February 17, 2009

For me at least, the difficulty level is just right, not too easy, not too difficult, which makes it perfect for me, as a beginner on this journey of improving my brain through such methods. Rather than being frustrated at times because it can be a bit difficult, I remember that this is all part of exercising the brain through thinking problems through, not being great right away or a genius. I just keep trying until something clicks and I solve it. I have noticed that I am getting a little better at this, already. I look forward to completing all of them then graduating to the next level with a more difficult book. It's about the process and the growing and rewiring of the brain.

I got this for my 8 year old kids and we enjoyed working out the puzzles. Though kids needed help with some puzzles, they could do most of them on their own. No mathematics knowledge is need. I have looked at few 'puzzle books' for kids, but most of them do not demand thinking, but require only patient hard work. I put 'finding the path through a maze', 'finding differences between two pictures', 'finding hidden things in a picture, 'word search' etc in this category. This book has only word searches. Rest are real puzzles that 'work the brain'.

I love math puzzles, alternative math education of every sort, and try to foist this material on my kids at every opportunity.This is the best puzzle book I've ever seen. And don't get fooled by the silly, generic cover that looks so much like any other book.The book organizes the puzzles into coherent types (logic, patterns, etc.), gives introductory strategies for solving, and gives a good number of practice problems of each sort.Most importantly, the problems are actually doable, tractable, reasonable. As a lifelong puzzler, I still think most similar books are either too difficult or have absurd and non-generalizable tricks to the solutions.

Lots and lots of puzzles, from super easy to quite challenging. There is an assortment of Word puzzles, spacial puzzles, logic puzzles, number puzzles, patterns, word play, and so on. The book is organized into 9 chapters, with each chapter addressing different ways of thinking and solving problems. See the pictures I included for table of contents and few randomly selected puzzle pages.1. Verbal Thinking2. Visual Thinking3. Logical Thinking4. Reasoning5. Outside the Box Thinking6. Sudoku & Other Placement Puzzles7. Brainteasers8. Word Play9. Crosswords and TriviaVery back of book includes answers to each!I've enjoyed this book. I didn't use it from start to finish, but just jumped around as I saw something that I wanted to work on. I keep a pad of paper and a pencil nearby as sometimes I wanted to jot something down to help me work a puzzle. Use it how you want. Some puzzles have hints along the way. Some are kinda useless to me (such anything with trivia, or having to know who some actors or performers are), yet most are really good- just need to use the information in front of you and your brain. Definitely lots to choose from. While I did not count to see if there are indeed 450 puzzles, there are definitely a lot of them, and one can pretty much find many to work through of interest.

This book started off easy enough, relaxing, but mentally invigorating. It made me use some mental faculties that were probably rusty. After the 1st chapter, however, it got ridiculous. I'm no Einstein but I'm no idiot either. These puzzles are hard and they're not what I was expecting either. I don't think we need to exercise our brains with twisting, complex concepts to keep it working properly. The author is out of my league - mentally anyway.

Great book, however I currently have no idea where I put it. Therefore I clearly have not gotten far enough into the book for it to be effective. When I find it again I am hoping to get to the "Improve Your Memory" section right away!

I enjoyed this book very much It’s challenging and entertaining

The author does a great job on explaining where some of the puzzles originated and why and how to go about working the unusual ones etc. It had a lot of information in it as well as puzzles to work on.