Blue Ribbon Logic

Logic-grid puzzles for adults, taught from the very first tick.

A logic-grid puzzle is a short story with the details missing: three bakers, three pies, three ribbons, and a handful of clues. Every clue is true, and the clues are all you need. You work out who did what by marking a grid of boxes with crosses and ticks. No general knowledge, no math beyond counting, and no guessing.

This book is for people who have never solved one, and for people who tried a puzzle book, got stuck, and found an answer key that gave the answers but not the reasons. It is set over five days at a made-up small-town county fair: pie tables, goat barns, the midway and the grandstand. Nobody gets murdered.

How it works

• Eight one-page lessons teach every move you need, one at a time, on a tiny puzzle about a lemonade stand: how the grid works, crossing out and ticking, clearing a line, the last box standing, carrying a tick across to the other blocks, narrowing clues, comparisons, and how to read each kind of clue exactly. Each lesson shows the grid with the new marks highlighted, and most end with a short "try it" question (answer printed upside down).
• Puzzle 0 is solved with you, move by move, with a picture of the grid after every clue.
• 49 puzzles over five fair days, easiest first. Day One uses three groups of three; Day Five uses four groups of five, the size puzzle magazines rate hard. Each day opens with a page on anything new it brings ("of the two" clues, exact differences, "but not both", the cross-check), so the difficulty never jumps without warning.
• One puzzle to a page, with a big grid. Boxes are about 5/8 inch on Day One and never smaller than 1/4 inch on Day Five. The clues sit above the grid, and an answer table fits in the grid's empty corner.
• A hint for every puzzle that does not give the game away: a checkpoint picture of the grid partway through (usually after one pass through the clues) and which clue to look at next. Lay it beside yours to find a slip without starting again.
• A full solution for every puzzle: the answer table, the finished grid, and every move in plain words, in order, including the moments where you have to come back to a clue.
• A ribbon card to tick off each puzzle as you solve it.

Every puzzle checked

Each clue is stored as data and its printed sentence is built from it. For every puzzle a program searched every possible arrangement (up to 1,728,000) and confirmed exactly one fits the clues. A second program solved each puzzle using only the moves the book teaches, with no trial and error; its steps are the printed solutions and its grids are the checkpoints.

What you download

• Blue Ribbon Logic (142 pages, PDF, US Letter, full color, with bookmarks): lessons, all 50 puzzles, hints and checkpoints, solutions and the ribbon card.
• The Solving Pad, US Letter (56 pages, PDF): every puzzle again, one to a page, plus five spare blank grids, so you can print just the puzzles.
• The Solving Pad, A4 (56 pages, PDF): the same, sized for A4 paper.
• A ZIP of all three files.

Good to know

• Print the pages, or write on them in any PDF app that lets you draw. The puzzle pages print well in black and white.
• Clues use consistent wording, and Lesson 7 lists what each kind of clue means: "either A or B" is always one of the two, "but not both" means exactly one, and places count from 1st.
• American English and US units (pounds, feet, dollars).
• This is a PDF download. No physical book is shipped.