Carol Vorderman's Massive Book of Sudoku (Paperback)

It contains 420 hand-crafted puzzles, which were hand-crafted by Nikoli the Japanese Publisher who has been hand-crafting Sudoku for the Japanese for more than 20 years.

The book has also been very well laid out. One puzzle per page, which makes them big enough to put in pencil marks if required. There is an explanation of techniques for the total novice and, if the sudoku don't prove challenging enough, each puzzle page has a space for your time and score. The puzzles are also rated from easy to super-difficult and grouped accordingly.

Considering the price per puzzle from the best quality puzzle-maker available, this book represents excellent value for money and well worth buying.

As an experienced sudoku player, I was delighted with this book and use it regularly.

It goes from easy to super-difficult (although rating puzzles is a very difficult thing to achieve. As the book itself explains, the puzzles may be rated differently elswhere and they are). The puzzles are hand-crafted from the Japanese company Nikoli, who are very well known for sudoku in Japan and have been for 20 odd years. They provide puzzles to the Guardian newspaper in Britain, amongst others. This means that the puzzles in the Massive Book are very good quality puzzles indeed, crafted to a very high standard - elegant, symmetrical, only one solution per puzzle - and fiendishly cunning. I have done computer generated puzzles and the hand-crafted do 'feel' different although they are no less challenging and the solving skills required remain the same.

I like the way this book is laid out. Obviously some thought has been put into this. There is one puzzle per page, which I like, then the puzzles are grouped according to difficulty level, with the easy puzzles first and so on until, at the back, there are the 'squiffy' puzzles (you'd be surprised how much difference that makes!) and the 16 cell puzzles. The grids themselves are big enough to put small pencil marks into the cells, which is the advantage of having one puzzle per page and which I appreciate (it also means that the sight-challenged amongst us can join in the game too).

Carol gives hints and tips at the front of the book, just in case these are your first sudoku puzzles and I liked the emails from readers of her previous book at the back. The answers to every grid are provided, should they be required and Carol also gives space at the bottom of each grid to write in your time. She also gives an example time of how long each puzzle should take and a score, which can be filled in on the scoreboard provided - should you choose so to do, I don't.

Considering that this book contains 420 hand-crafted Nikoli puzzles for approximately £7.19 the book is certainly value for money - which is why I bought it - and although it is a massive book it's not too big for small hands like mine to hold. I'd like to see this and further books of this nature to be spiral bound because the spine of mine is taking a battering but other than that, I'd say buy the book it's fantastic!