Top 10 Quiz and Puzzle Books this Christmas

Negotiate the most fiendish brain-teasers in history with this compendium of legendary puzzles compiled by the bestselling author of Alex’s Adventures in Numberland. With witty and enlightening commentary from the author on a range of thinkers, intellectuals and eccentrics, this is so much more than a straightforward puzzle book.

A colossal bestseller in its 2018 edition, The Ordnance Survey Puzzle Tour of Britain returns with a mind-bogglingly inventive array of posers, conundrums and teasers. Work your way around the British Isles in forty regional maps, answering questions that test your geographical knowledge, mathematical acumen and lateral thinking.

If you think you know your Bach from your Berlioz and your Schubert from your Shostakovich, then The Classic FM Puzzle Book is the perfect test of your classical music knowledge. Blending lateral thinking with specialist trivia, this attractively produced little volume is a veritable rhapsody in clues.

With tantalising mysteries culled from the archives of the Metropolitan Police Service, The Scotland Yard Puzzle Book allows you to adopt the analytical skills of your favourite fictional detectives. Absolutely essential for all crime fans, this compelling collection from the author of Bletchley Park Brainteasers will test your investigative abilities to the limit.

Two great British institutions, gardening and quizzing, come into full bloom in this inspired collection of horticultural head-scratchers. Test your knowledge of everything from botany to biology to Latin with this ideal stocking filler.

Crammed with enough concepts for fifty standalone quiz programmes, House of Games is the brilliantly surreal and silly companion volume to Richard Osman's addictive TV show.

Attractively presented in vintage Penguin livery, this is the ultimate literary quiz, packed full of questions on everyone from Dickens to Dahl. With such a broad range of genres and topics covered, The Penguin Book Quiz really is the perfect antidote to tired parlour games and awkward small talk this Christmas.

Follow in the footsteps of the great explorers with this exquisite compendium of geographical mind-benders. Spanning the globe and the centuries, these brilliant brain-teasers double as fascinating and informative snippets of history, demonstrating humanity’s romantic thirst for discovery.

Television’s most gloriously esoteric quiz show returns for a second volume of complex connections, missing vowels and nigh-on unscaleable connecting walls. Pit your wits against some of the toughest question setters in the business with these magnificently wide-ranging rounds.