The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book: Lexical perplexities and cracking conundrums from across the globe
by Alex Bellos
Rating: 5.0 / 5 · Read · Finished 2023-05-27
The title says it all! If you like puzzles and you like languages, you’ll love this book. The puzzles get very hard very fast and don’t always feel fair. It’s a completely different kind of puzzle than I’m used to. Mostly of the form: “Here are 5 sentences in a language you’ve never heard of, plus their translations in a random order. Now translate these 2 new sentences.” The book trains you up on pattern-matching skills and techniques in the first couple chapters, so you get more confident. You’ll be amazed at how much you can translate in a language you don’t know just by looking for patterns!
But please, please, please, skip puzzles or look at the start of the solution if you get stuck for a long time. Otherwise you’re going to be severely frustrated. Also, treat the book as disposable because you’re going to be writing all over every page.