With a twist on the anagram, this book gives die-hard word-puzzlers something new.
Word puzzle books run the gamut from word-searches to crossword puzzles to anagrams, and many falling somewhere in-between. Leong’s “expanagram” is an extension of the classic anagram, where to each finished anagram is added a new letter creating a new anagram. After a brief introduction, the book begins with 5-letter puzzles and proceeds all the way to the 10-letter variety. Often there are as many as six stages to an exapanagram (six letters added step-by-step to make six successive expanding anagrams). The solutions to the puzzles on each page are contained on the opposite side of that page, making game play more convenient by not requiring readers to search for an answer section. At times, though, it can happen that a puzzle has more than one possible solution; the reader might expand the anagrams through an alternate set of words and come up with a different solution than that given in the book (though this is less likely with the longer puzzles). This makes many of the puzzles more like a game (where there might be alternate solutions) than a rigid puzzle with one unique answer. In general, no order is followed in the words for a given puzzle, which should keep most puzzlers hard at work finding possible solutions; however, there is a chapter with themed puzzles. These “Expanagram Exclusives” are expanding anagrams that follow a given theme: sports, fruits and vegetables, insects, etc. These common-themed anagrams give these particular puzzles a classic (and perhaps more enjoyable) flavor. But with only eight of these themed puzzles, the author could have made a more robust gaming experience by expanding these special expanagrams.
For those who love playing with words, this should be right up their alley.