Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Language Lover's Puzzle Book: A World Tour of Languages and Alphabets in 100 Amazing Puzzles

The Language Lover's Puzzle Book: A World Tour of Languages and Alphabets in 100 Amazing Puzzles

Bellos, Alex

Paperback

Series: Alex Bellos Puzzle Books

Logic & Brain TeasersPuzzlesWord Search

Publisher Price: $17.95

ISBN10: 1615198040
ISBN13: 9781615198047
Publisher: Experiment
Published: Nov 9 2021
Pages: 416
Weight: 1.10
Height: 1.18 Width: 5.98 Depth: 8.98
Language: English
Whether you're a crossword solver, cryptogram fan, Scrabble addict, or Sudoku savant, The Language Lover's Puzzle Book is guaranteed to tease your brain and twist your tongue. Puzzle master Alex Bellos begins in Japan, where we can observe some curious counting:

boru niko = two balls
tsuna nihon = two ropes
uma nito = two horses
kami nimai = two sheets of paper

ashi gohon = five legs
ringo goko = five apples
sara gomai = five plates
kaba goto = five hippos

Now, how do the Japanese say nine cucumbers?*
a) kyuri kyuhon
b) kyuri kyuko
c) kyuri kyuhiki
d) kyuri kyuto

Bellos finds the intrigue--and the human element--in a dizzying array of ancient, modern, and even invented tongues, from hieroglyphs to Blissymbolics, Danish to Dothraki. Filled with unusual alphabets, fascinating characters, and intriguing local customs for time-telling, naming children, and more, this is a bravura book of brainteasers and beyond--it's a globe-trotting, time-traveling celebration of language.

*The word endings depend on shape: Flat things end in -mai and spherical things end in -ko. Cucumbers are long things (like ropes and legs), so they end in -hon. The answer is (a)!

Also in

Puzzles

View All