T08I Puzzle Book
Christopher Tobin
Green Hill (2025)
ISBN: 978-1923443723
Reviewed by Stephanie Suesan Smith, for Reader Views (12/2025)
T08I Puzzle Book by Christopher Tobin is a book of 31 puzzles that are a cross between a crossword puzzle and a cipher. In addition, some of the rules include elements of Latin squares. The premise of the cipher is that the number corresponding to a letter looks like that letter. For example, using a 3 instead of an E, or a 6 for a C.
First, the puzzles have clues like a crossword puzzle. Answer the clues with words of the required length. However, each word must be turned into a number using the cipher that is included in the clues to the puzzle. Only letters on the cipher may be used in the answer. Finally, no number can be used more than once in its row or column. The puzzles start off with easy 10 X 10 squares. The intermediate puzzles are 11 X 11 squares, while the expert puzzles are 12 X 12 squares. The last puzzle is an anagram using answers from each puzzle.
For me, the difficult part was using only words with all the letters included in the cipher. Many of the clues had multiple words that would make legitimate answers. Only one of those could be spelled with only letters in the cipher. It was a little confusing to me to obey the directional arrows for the clues as to where to put them in the puzzle. Sometimes that cipher was put in a row or column, but sometimes it ran diagonally or even up and diagonally. Often, the arrangement of the clues did not let me use the answer to one clue to help me find the answer to another clue that stumped me.
Finally, somewhere on each puzzle was at least one colored square. The cipher in that block was used in the final puzzles, four anagrams. Those puzzles were relatively straightforward, assuming you got the cipher in that block correct. Each anagram does have a clue, however, to help you.
I found these puzzles frustrating at first. I struggled to turn the answers into ciphers the first few times, but got much faster as I went along. The fact that the answers did not necessarily intersect another clue made it hard to know if I had the right answer at times. If you like moderately hard crosswords and ciphers, you will enjoy this book.