The UberGogen, UltraGogen, HyperGogen, HyperGogen+ and GoldenGogen puzzles in these books go from: the easiest
you can find on this site on a Monday that will take you ten minutes to do (a bit longer for the HyperGogen -
a few hours in some cases);
to the hardest ones that you get on a Sunday - to give you an idea, the one
below-left isn't the hardest I have done and it took me about an hour.
Try today's Uber- and UltraGogen puzzles by clicking Here or the HyperGogen
puzzle by clicking Here.
For the uninitiated, a Gogen puzzle has a 5x5 array of cells within
which the letters A-Y are placed. Some of those letter positions are given to you
as cells that are filled in for you. To find the rest of them, you are given word
clues that show you where the missing letters go. Usually, there are nine cells given
away and the word clues provide all of the letters in the words. With an UberGogen, not
all of the letters are given in the clues. With the UltraGogen, fewer clue cells are
filled in for you but all of the letters are in the word clues. There is a tutorial
here for you, explaining the subject in more detail.
The HyperGogen doesn't allow you the comfort of using real words, except by coincidence
so being fairly confident about the 'q being next to the 'u' or that a word is going to
have a vowel or a semi-vowel in it, for example. is gone. Also, letters can be repeated
within clues, clues are allowed to be only two letters long and so on: all you have left
is logic itself. The Hypergogen+ is the same except that you also have a word that is ten
or more letters long to find. One might argue that by adding a long real word, it makes
locating the letters easier but only if you happen to guess the word first - and correctly.
I will let you be the judge of that.
The GoldenGogen is like the HyperGogen except that the layout is designed by me, not the computer, and now,
you can have puzzles with only one clue letter in them. In fact a number of the puzzles that appear to have more
that one clue letter have only one or several blocks of isolated links. Have fun. Some are easy, some are difficult
if you map out the letter links, you will see something more.
Each Grosse Book of Gogen Puzzles book consists of 250 puzzles that are all new, never been published -
125 Uber-Gogen puzzles and 125 Ultra-Gogen puzzles - along with the answers at
the back and, as you would expect, they increase in difficulty as you work
your way through them. You can see on the 'Look inside'
feature on Amazon's website,
what the puzzles look like - they are printed on a 5½"x8½" page which
is a bit narrower than DIN A5 paperback format on off-white paper so they are easy on the eye, a good,
practical size and will still fit in your pocket - take it with you anywhere and get stuck
into it whenever you want. There is literally hundreds of hours' worth of entertainment in each book.
The Grosse book of HyperGogen Puzzles has 25 each of UberGogen and UltraGogen to get you started or,
if you are buying one for somebody that has never done these puzzles before, they will introduce to them
the way that the puzzle works so that they can get stuck into the 250 HyperGogen puzzles that follow.
The X-Gogen books have one hundred puzzles - 25 each of UberGogen, UltraGogen, HyperGogen and HyperGogen+.
The latter of these is the same as a normal HyperGogen but within the puzzle is hidden a 9+ letter word that
you have to find. The X-Gogen book is small at just over 120 pages with 100 puzzles plus answers but it is aimed at
pocket money sized presents for children to get their puzzle addict parents for birthdays, Christmas or other
special days - or even for going on holiday - there being the large print versions for people with poorer
eyesight who like to do them as well.
The GoldenGogen books have one hundred and fifty puzzles - 25 each of UberGogen and UltraGogen
then 100 GoldenGogen puzzles. The latter of these is like a HyperGogen+ (ie, it has within it
hidden a 9+ letter word that you have to find) but the puzzle layout itself is designed by hand
and there is no limit as to how close the clue cells can be to each other. There are also
large print versions for people with poorer eyesight who like to do them as well - again, these have
the same puzzles in them as the smaller books. Alternatively, you dont't need to have poor eyesight
to have a large print copy, you can use the extra space in the large print books as more working out space.
The large print versions have the same puzzles as the smaller books of the same name but they use
Helvetica as the font (the others do as well but Helvetica is specified as an easy-to-read font) of
at least 18 points and the paper size is DIN A4.
So, whether you are yourself, a hardened puzzle junkie, someone who wants to become one or you need to find a gift
for somebody that is one, this is the only place you will find them.
There are fourteen regular books and eight large print books with a total of 2,400 unique
puzzles and you can go to each book's Amazon page by clicking on the links above.
Amazon deals with payment and will send the books you order to any address you specify and wrap
them as gifts if you want them to.
Have Fun.