“Suzy goes to a new school. In her class she likes Fred but doesn’t like Graham. She likes Ross but doesn’t like Anna. She likes Mandy but doesn’t like Sandra. Does she like Sarah?” . . . Can you solve it? Our family loves to work out puzzles together like this one from Train Your Brain Puzzle Book Mind-Melting Conundrums, puzzle 4.

Train Your Brain Puzzle Books contain lots of different kinds of “brain-scrambling challenges,” “brain-bending challenges,” “mind-twisting puzzles,” “super-tricky teasers,” and “mind-melting conundrums.” All of which happen to be titles of the series of books. Each color, paperback book ($7.99) has approximately 84 puzzles to challenge your critical thinking and mathematical reasoning skills. All answers are provided in the back of the books.

There are 3 levels of difficulty to the puzzle books including Level A Super Brain, Level B Mega Mind, and Level C Ultra Genius. Types of puzzles provided involve putting pieces together, addition, multiplication, division, finding patterns, mazes, finding connections, word problems, connect the dots, skip counting, logic, counting, careful examination, identifying series, visual processing, vocabulary, finding differences, countries and capital cities, identifying categories, and more.

We used these books for fun over our fall break. The kids liked to solve them on their own and then compare answers. Once they had the books, it was near impossible to wrestle them away. It was a good thing that we got to review two of them (Mind-Melting Conundrums and Brain-Scrambling Challenges), that way both of our older kids had one to work on each.

The kids liked that there were both mathematical puzzles and puzzles that were based on reasoning and logic. This gave both of the girls puzzles that were easy for them and some that were harder (one child is mathematical minded and the other has a mind for literacy). With the combination of puzzles, they were both challenged.

We recommend these books for those that would like to add a bit of logic and mathematical reasoning to their school day (they could be used as a problem of the day). Folks that need some ideas for long traveling days would find these put to good use. And they have enough fun packed into each book that they would make great presents as well.

—Product Review by Bethany Hankinson, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, February, 2016