Puzzle Rap Star is a puzzle book created by Crux Club.
Format
Style of Play:
- Puzzle book
- Light puzzle hunt
- Play on-demand (i.e. purchase and play any time)
Who is it For?
- Story seekers
- Puzzle lovers
- Any experience level
Required Equipment: Internet connection, pen and paper
Recommended Team Size: 1-2
Play Time: No game clock. Our reviewers played this book leisurely over a week or more. Chapters took anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or so of active puzzling.
Price: about $14.99
Booking: purchase and play at your leisure
Description
This is a book where you work puzzles 1 through 60 in numeric order, since some puzzles build on prior answers. The final answer is entered online. A pencil and paper are useful for solving and keeping track of answers. Looking up information on the internet may be necessary for a few puzzles.
Cindi S’ Reaction
Puzzle Rap Star’s the name of this book
I recommend you give it a look
It’s so committed to its theme
With a never-ending rhyming scheme
Even the copyright page got a beat—now that’s extreme
Sixty mind-benders wait in these pages
Some take minutes while others last ages
Word-playin’, clue-layin’,
These puzzles, they slayin’
Dive deep but don’t weep
If you can’t find the way in
(Try the hints in the back—
No shame if you put the whole day in
And still can’t figure it out,
That’s what they’re there for, just sayin’)
Every section’s got a meta
That’s betta than the one before it,
Be sure your solution’s the truth, son,
Like a rapper at the mic spitting fire
With every note, time’s expirin’
Like a DJ spinning a vinyl,
Is your answer final?
Last verse, I’ll be terse, gotta say
If you’ll listen, REA:
Fan or not of the great rappers,
Eminem, Dre, or young scrappers
You don’t have to love rap
to enjoy this sick puzzlin’,
But if you do, here’s a clue:
Drink up, son, you’ll be guzzlin’.
Andrew Reynolds’ Reaction
Puzzle Rap Star is Crux Club’s followup to their first puzzle book Mob Treasure. Puzzle Rap Star is not a sequel because the story is entirely different, but it does largely follow the same format as Mob Treasure. 60 puzzles are chunked into six different chapters with each chapter increasing in difficulty, or at least in complexity. The story follows your personal journey (your first assignment is to choose your rap name) to become the best rapper you can be, and also to find your friend who went missing recently. When compared to Mob Treasure, I found the puzzles to be easier – using the metric of how many times I flipped to the back of the book for hints. The chapter that takes place in an arcade was especially inventive in the way they embedded different styles of puzzles into video games. If you enjoyed Mob Treasure, I believe you’ll like this one even more.
Cara Mandel’s Reaction
Puzzle Rap Star was an enjoyable narrative puzzle book experience. As the follow up to Crux Club’s Mob Treasure, the book followed the same general format. A series of puzzles unlock keywords that are later used in meta puzzles to progress the storyline. The puzzles themselves were mostly enjoyable although there were a handful that I’d consider to be a bit of a stretch. Thankfully, there is both a hint system and solutions included at the back in case you should need a nudge in the right direction. The book provided a robust amount of puzzling and there was some very enjoyable rhyming and other musically thematic challenges. Overall, I enjoyed the book despite some logic leaps. I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoys puzzling at a leisurely pace. It was a great book to travel with and provided many hours of entertainment.
Disclosure: Crux Club provided the Hivemind reviewers with complimentary copies for review.