Publisher's Synopsis
There are Gogens and then there are Uber- and Ultra-Gogens and whilst this book does not concern itself with the former, an UltraGogen with only two letters given away will take you well over an hour to do and in this graded book, you can choose your won level of difficulty and work you way up to the really hard ones at your own pace. The simple Gogen that you will find in many of today's newspapers is a fairly easy little puzzle that you can do in few minutes when you are on a bus or a train. It comprises of a square array of 25 cells within which you place all but the last letter of the alphabet so that the word clues for each puzzle step through the array one cell at a time, horizontally, vertically and diagonally, in any direction. In order to help you, the letters in the corners, half way along each edge and in the middle are given to you so that you can fill the cells from the word clues - each letter-to-letter bond defining where letters go. All of the letter positions can be worked out using just logic - there is no guesswork no probability, simply certainty. All you have to do is work out a few strategies and off you go. With a bit of practice, you can do the newspaper puzzles in a few minutes.However, there is a dark side.With the Uber-Gogen, some of the given letters aren't in the clue words so you can't pin them down so easily. Additionally, quite often, another letter is omitted as well so when you finish with the clue words, you still have a gap. You can find this letter by working your way through the alphabet so even that is found using logic. The fewer letters you have in the clue words, the harder the puzzle is and as you progress through the book, that is what happens.The Ultra-Gogen, on the other hand, has fewer given letters although all 25 letters are in the clue words. As you go from puzzle to puzzle, first of all, the centre cell is left empty in the easiest, then another and so on until finally, you are down to just two clue letters, one of which is not in a corner so again, you only need logic to work out all of the letter positions.This book, in nice, draw-all-over-it-paper, is aimed at the hardened puzzle addict and with 250 puzzles to go at, it will provide weeks of entertainment.
