Mind Benders and Brainteasers 2012 Page-a-Day Calendar

 (4 customer reviews)

This shipped very quickly and arrived in great condition. I check out some of the mind benders and they look like they would keep someone occupied for a fair amount of time. Very cool!

My wife and I enjoy doing brainteasers and puzzles at breakfast every morning and were hoping to supplement this activity with the puzzles from this calendar. Unfortunately, it has been a big disappointment and falls down in many ways:
1. The weekend pages are not puzzles at all but little blurbs and tips ( e.g. exercise is good for your brain). These are a complete waste of paper and largely obvious
2. Too many of the puzzles are trivial and offer no challenge
3. One series of puzzles tries to simulate lip reading, an interesting idea, but the pictures are too small and unclear to make it workable
4. Most of the puzzles are taken from external sources, like the lumosity.com, and are not particularly original or novel

For someone interested in puzzles, the Mensa Page-A-Day calendar is a much better purchase

I received this calendar as a gift for Christmas. Many of the puzzles are fine, but at least 1 a week asks about dates that happen later in the calendar. For example, the puzzle for this last weekend asks which months have helpful hints about which puzzle types. Not only are these not puzzles, but they're asking me to read ahead in the calendar to know the answer.

Unrelated to the quality of the puzzles, but relevant to the quality of the product, this "Page-A-Day" calendar combines the weekends into one page, which means this is actually a "Page-A-Weekday-Plus-One-For-Weekends" calendar...