Title: Walt’s Vanity License Plate: Word Search Puzzle Book
Author: Walter Fadness
Publisher: XlibrisUS
ISBN: 978-1-5245-3294-9
Pages: 144
Genre: Games / Trivia
Reviewed by: Barbara Miller
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Pacific Book Review
Word playing author Walter Fadness has created 100 puzzles of varying levels of difficulty and assembled them in his new book, appropriately titled, Walt’s Vanity License Plate: Word Search Puzzle Book. If you were to finish a game of Scrabble, then fill in all of the other empty boxes with random letters, you will get what looks like a grid of letters, with hidden words within the patterns – this is the format of a popular word puzzle. Of course, once you add the diagonals, it forms a new dimension, exponentially making the puzzle harder. These word puzzles have become very popular with syndicated newspapers publishing daily inserts with the answers the following day, as well as popularized in a variety of media.
Walt’s Vanity License Plate is best to buy in a paper format, because you will need a pencil to draw your discoveries around the words you find. Luckily, for those diehard perfectionists, Fadness provides the answers to each of his puzzles at the end of the book – but no peeking! His concept of finding license plates makes these puzzles even harder, as the crypto-meanings of many of the 7 letter plates are used phonetically – like the common thumb texting in SMS messaging nowadays.
Although the book contains puzzles, and only puzzles (without an introduction or comments by the author), the history of word games goes back centuries. Humans like to exercise their mind, and language and math are the two most popular areas for challenging relaxation. For example crossword puzzles have been popular as a daily brain-teaser with The New York Times hooking people into grabbing their pencils. Math formulation games such as Haiku have emerged to take on its own place in the genre of paper-and-pencil games. However the matrix of words embedded and presented in Fadness’ square blocks of letters makes for the player to stare at the grid and use their mind to search for the clues; which requires immense concentration. As our awareness begins to illuminate the solutions and when we allow ourselves to concentrate on a fun and challenging puzzle, we tend to put aside the thoughts of the day for all of the other parts of our lives – making these games a totally relaxing endeavor when used in this manner.
For young adults and teens taking a road trip, Walt’s Vanity License Plate: Word Search Puzzle Book will definitely keep them quiet and pensive in the back seat! It is a great gift for those who enjoy games such as Wheel of Fortune, Scrabble, spelling bees and a wide variety of games of intellectual stimulation based upon simple rules yet complex algorithms of logic needing to be toned to achieve conclusions. Like doing push-ups for your brain, Fadness will sharpen the reader’s cognitive pattern recognition while players have to sharpen their pencils to keep up with all of the hidden words.
