Puzzle Books & Posters in over 60 Languages!A visual-spatial challenge for puzzlers worldwide, the new book and poster series "What's Missing?" arrived online in May 2013. The series challenges readers to compare two pictures and locate missing numbers, letters, and/or words. As an added feature, the numbers, letters, and words are arranged on the page in a manner which often creates a larger gestalt or picture, similar to Pointillism in art. No knowledge of foreign language is necessary to enjoy the basic puzzles. Either Google Translate or a bilingual dictionary can be used to guess the word describing a picture, where relevant.
In the sample below, the number "1" forms a random design. In many of the puzzles found in this book series, the numbers, letters, or words form pictures of common entities, such as household items, cultural symbols, and animals.
The book series begins with numbers, operators, and English, and then takes a world tour through Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, focusing on languages with non-Roman characters. Towards the end of the series, the language selections return to Europe, visiting the Germanic and Romance languages, and ending in Scandanavia.
The posters, which are available from Zazzle, represent the full set of over 60 languages, while the puzzle book series currently consists of approximately 2/3 of this amount. The full list of languages is included below:
- Afrikaans
- Albanian
- Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics
- Arabic
- Armenian
- Azerbaijani
- Basque
- Bengali
- Bulgarian
- Chinese
- Croatian
- Czech
- Danish
- English
- Estonian
- Filipino
- Finnish
- French
- Georgian
- German
- Greek
- Gujarati
- Hatian
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Hmong
- Hungarian
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Kannada
- Khmer
- Korean
- Lao
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Macedonian
- Malay
- Maltese
- Marathi
- Neo-Tifinagh Berber Glyphs
- Norwegian
- Numbers
- Persian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Russian
- Sanskrit
- Serbian
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Spanish
- Swahili
- Swedish
- Tamil
- Telugu
- Thai
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Urdu
- Vietnamese
Books are available from CreateSpace and Amazon, and posters are available from Zazzle. A free sample for download, with a puzzle in each of 10 languages, is available from the Schottenbauer Publishing website. A trailer video for the series is available from YouTube. Sample lesson plans are available on the blog Alphabet Puzzles.
Alphabet Puzzles in 30 Languages!
NEW! In May 2014, a new series of mixed-language puzzle books arrived! "What's Missing? Alphabet Puzzles in 30 Languages" provides a unique sample of alphabet puzzles. With one puzzle per page, these puzzles fit well on electronic readers. Volume 1 sets the pattern for the series, containing puzzles with alphabet letters from Ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Berber, Chinese, English, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Lao, Macedonian, Marathi, Nepali, Norwegian, Numbers, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, and Ukrainian. This series is available both as books from the vendors listed above, and as Kindle e-books from Amazon.
In October 2013, a series of art puzzles was introduced: "What's Missing? Art Puzzles." Volume 1 contains puzzles with geometrical designs, and Volume 2 contains musical symbols. Additional volumes are planned to include photographs, sketches, and other artwork.
Teachers, educators, and psychologists may be interested in the series, "What's Missing? Puzzles for Educational Testing." Additional information is available on the page for Educational Testing.
