Hi everybody…! Brainteasers for the not mathematically inclined?

[Oudis]

Hi everybody,

I’m new here – I’ve just joined the forum. I’d like to ask a question, I need some assistance. Because of personal circumstances I think my intelligence has become dull, perhaps my brain is a bit moldy (I can hear the rotors, nuts and gears inside my skull: they’re rusty). I’ve been thinking of purchasing a book of brainteasers, puzzles, riddles and the like, just to train my brain again – and by the way, I’m already sixty, and as they say, “Use it or lose it.” However, albeit not totally stupid, I’ve never been good at deductive or inductive reasoning, math, etc. I was – for reasons I won’t go into – “tested” in my youth. The tests confirmed what I already knew: I look but don’t see, I think but come up with nothing –and then, after a minute or a day, the answer is there, the whole of it – evident, simple, obvious. I have been “working on it” subconsciously. And all of a sudden –after a minute, a week, a month – the gestalt is there.

I’ve checked a couple of online bookstores and found some titles; could anybody recommend a good book of brainteasers that do not require from me any previous knowledge of, for instance, math? I am not mathematically inclined…  Geometric puzzles? I love them… But math? I can barely deal with basic arithmetic. I need problems I can solve by using simple… logic. Or common sense. Or that kind of subconscious thinking that people call “a hunch”.

Here’s a brief list of the books I’ve found so far; I’d like to know where to begin, which one I should buy first. I’d like to start with a relatively easy, entertaining book, and go on buying increasingly difficult books of problems:

·        Logic Puzzles for Beginners Clouds Puzzles - 200 Logic Puzzles by Lorens Rober

·        Wrinklies Logic Puzzles: Brainteasers for Golden Oldies

·        Tangrams: 330 Puzzles (Dover Recreational Math)Mensa Visual Brainteasers By John Bremner

·        Sip & Solve Two-Minute Brainteasers by Paul Sloane

·        Mensa Visual Brainteasers By John Bremner

·        Mensa: Logic Brainteasers By Philip Carter

·        Canterbury Puzzles by Henry Ernest Dudeney

·        536 Curious Problems and Puzzles by Henry Ernest Dudeney

·        More Puzzles And Curious Problems by Henry Ernest Dudeney

·        The Big Book of Puzzles (Puffin Books) by Ronald Ridout

·        Puzzle Baron's Big Book of Puzzles: Countless Hours of Brain-Challenging Fun

·        Perplexing Logic Puzzles: Solve more than 100 Brilliant Brainteasers (Welbeck Publishing Group)

·        King Arthur in Search of His Dog and Other Curious Puzzles by Raymond M. Smullyan

·        Martin Gardner Perplexing Puzzles and Tantalizing Teasers

·        Martin Gardner Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing

·        Contemporary Brainteasers by Terry Stickels

I would appreciate any advice/input/feedback. If there’s a book – the right book I’m looking for – that I still haven’t found, please let me know. Hope to join one of your discussions one of these days; thank you in advance,

Oudis

Post Scriptum: There are two Mensa books on the list, but if you think of me, don’t think Alan about Turing or Jean-François Champollion, think Forrest Gump.