Loved this. Really wish this had been around when I was a child.

Great fun, easy to follow and fantastic way to learn

Used this book as part of the run up to KS3 exams for child who knew times tables but had convinced herself she did not know them. We found these fun and made her realise she did actually know her times tables so it really helped.

Thank you Netgalley and Collins Reference for this eCopy to review

I have always struggled with Times Tables so teaching my children is a nightmare. We have enjoyed this book, the puzzles are fun and easy to do and increase in difficulty so you are not scared off on page 1!

They are bright and colourful so appeal to my children, and the instructions are well written so they could do them on their own as well

A puzzle book to help and encourage children with their tables. Aimed at 8+ but many of the early puzzles will be accessible to younger children as the difficulty level progresses slowly. Early puzzles focus on the lower end of the times tables. As children complete puzzles the higher tables are introduced and many are mixed with the lower ones, this helps reinforcement.

The type of puzzle is repeated on a regular basis so children will know how to tackle them as the work through the book and this should encourage confidence, however some children may find this a little boring.

Three books for allegedly "Big Thinkers" have come my way (out of a set of seven or more), and all work as very good mental workouts for the younger puzzler. "Logic Games for Big Thinkers" is fairly self-explanatory, with a very impressive spread of puzzles parents will find in their newspapers, but in junior forms. So sudokus are only 4x4 grids to start with, and what is basically something that will grow into a suguru uses more or less the same 'ripple effect' technique to spread stars around the grid of odd-shaped boxes, as opposed to every allowed numeral. 'No Four in a Row' is a twist on a kurosu, where rules dictate how we fill in a grid with Xs and Os. What is here called 'King's Journey' is a hidato according to a paper I get to see, but under any name is yet another of those damnably likeable Japanese efforts that have a global reach and no small satisfaction at getting done without problems. Number squares, code cracking tests, and the traditional logic problem with all the tick and cross boxes pepper these pages too – but I liked it when we did get a sustained run at one kind of puzzle with increasing difficulty, such as the suguru, the crosswords presented as jigsaw puzzles waiting to be completed once more, and the empty grid whose patches of loop (or dot-to-dot fence) we must extend to all corners. What we lose in variety we gain in pressure to become young experts at these kinds of things.

"Travel Games for Big Thinkers" is in two chunks, the first half being for two players, and giving us full instruction plus pages for us to complete the pastime perhaps a half a dozen times (or just five, if we like it enough to want photocopies made for subsequent sessions). We start with all we need for Hangman, including the ghost of the man due to be completed at his peril, and prompts for topics our chosen word can come from. Next it's combative dot-joining, with either player claiming the box between the dots when it's completed. 'Word Guess' is basically one player being a Wordle solver, with the other as setter. 'Vortex' is a simple numerical game to take part in, but one whose best tactics may well elude players for the entire holiday. Being given the grids for Noughts and Crosses seems cheap, seeing as how easily they can be made for ourselves, but there is certainly more stuff here for us to discover and have fun with.

At the midpoint it becomes a solitary hobby, and we get a right spread, from multiple choice quizzes, spot the differences, Kriss Krosses and suchlike, that tend to have a themed travel and transport and places topic, to the regular sudoku, mazes and so on. I did find an incorrect letter added to a part-filled arrow word, but little else to make me doubt any of these volumes' competency.

Finally for now, "Times Table Games for Big Thinkers" is obviously concentrating on maths, and is the one of these the more traditionally minded teacher will welcome the most. There are mazes still, but peppered by numbers, and we have restrictions based on whichever times table we're currently using as regards whether we can go past the numbers or not. We have to do simple mental multiplication in numerous ways, from solving the simplest of sums to fulfilling the pattern in the results of a rote times table. I would have thought things could be just called "even" as opposed to "answers in the two times table", but there you go. At least the book does what the others have, which is increase the difficulty very well – it sneaks in division here and there too, without us really noticing, and in the most taxing and logical puzzle demands we find common denominators of set numbers.

All three I saw looked very welcoming with their bright, colourful design, well written instructions, and at £4.99 seemed very good value for money. Yes, you could see the two-handed half of the travel book a little light on great content, but even when the maths became closest to resembling an old-fashioned exercise book it was cramming learning in through achievable and enjoyable tasks. That and the logic/brain training one get four and a half stars, and even the holiday special gets four.