Books Like Where'S Waldo? The Wonder Book For Adults?

Question

Any recommendations for complex adult visual puzzle books that are more detailed and immersive than childhood seek-and-find favorites? Looking for something sophisticated but fun.

myKatobird · Answer

For adults who enjoy a ‘Where’s Waldo?’ style of game then you may want to try hidden object games or art books which feature complex scenes for you to search around. The playful seek-and-find style of these types of game can also be found in a narrative, such as in ‘Wild Books: A Collection of Naughty Stories’ where characters in the stories hunt for clues and try to unravel secrets and in each situation you are rewarded by looking at the details of their risqué behavior.

Madison · Answer

For adults to enjoy the search for things in pictures, there are more adult versions of ‘Where’s Wally?’. I enjoyed ‘The Secret’ by Byron Preiss, a real-world treasure hunt, with 12 treasures hidden across North America and their location given by a long poetic riddle. Few have been found since 1982. Also of interest is ‘Codex Seraphinianus’ an apparently complete encyclopedia of an alien world. Unlike ‘Where’s Wally?’ this is not about finding objects in the pages but a puzzle to understand the meaning of each very strange illustration. For those who want to be challenged in their brains, this is a great choice. But, best of all, there’s been a huge growth of online communities to discuss one book and that book is ‘S.’ by J.J. Abrams. The book is about a series of hand-written margin notes, and other inserted artifacts, and online forums are full of theories as to what they all mean. The fun of this book is discussing with others your shared obsession.

Franklin · Answer

Missing from the market for adults are the kinds of visually immersive books that make Where’s Waldo? so much fun for kids. Instead of simply searching for people in a crowd, adult readers can immerse themselves in elaborate, rewarding puzzles that reinforce reading as a rich, exploratory activity. Masquerade, for example, is a beautiful, surreal treasure hunt developed by artist Kit Williams in the 1970s for real-world locations. More recent and mysterious are The Mysteries of Harris Burdick and Destination: Art by Jessica Stewart. The former contains 14 paintings with 14 mysterious captions; readers are challenged to create their own stories or to uncover secrets hidden in the artist’s work. The latter book is a treasure hunt that allows adults to engage with famous works of art as I-spy games.

If you are a fan of more sinister search and finds then Graeme Base’s ‘The Eleventh Hour’ is a cracking good whodunit involving plenty of hidden clues and ciphers. In many ways this book is full of secrets which I have revisited on several occasions and yet I still manage to find additional detail which I had previously missed. Conversely if you want something completely different then the search for and discovering of objects within Graeme Base’s ‘Animalia’ will certainly provide you with plenty of fun and excitement. Again as with ‘The Eleventh Hour’ this book requires 100% concentration in order to extract maximum pleasure and benefit from the book and in many ways can be described as meditation with a reward system at the end.

Eternal_Dragon · Answer

I miss community puzzle hunts like Masquerade where we got to search for puzzles in parks and such. One way to recreate this experience with today’s technology would be to create Alternate Reality Game (ARG) lore books such as The Black Watchmen by Nicole Cliffe or This Book Is A Planetarium by Kelli Anderson. Objects that you can physically manipulate and that contain hidden secrets are so much more wondrous than regular books. And the best part is that the book is merely a portal to the larger game. Most books are just that—books. But for the true adventurer, these are the ultimate treasure maps.

Chandrakiran Yarlagadda · Answer

Innovative children’s books also come in the form of thick novels. Many chapters in these books are made up of wordless, sequential illustrations that you ‘read’ like you would watch a film. These pictures give you emotional cues and tell you where the story is going. A wonderful example of this kind of story telling is ‘Flotsam’ by David Wiesner. This wordless picture book is about a camera that washes up on the shore of a desert island. Each subsequent photo in the book is even more fantastical than the previous. You search each image for clues to what happens next in the story. The way this artist tells such a wonderful story with just detail in his pictures is simple and at the same time also very complex and therefore wonderful.

Buju pitah · Answer

You may recall the graphic novels ‘The Red String’ and ‘The City of Gold and Lead’. While you can find objects in those illustrations, for the most part you are immersed in an atmosphere. The level of detail is, to be sure, overwhelming, but in a very positive sense. Many European comics have a similar quality, like the series of ‘The Obscure Cities’ by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters, architectural wonders that you can explore one panel at a time. The emotions evoked by searching for something or someone in these environments are typical for the Search. We experience them when reading Moebius’s art books as well: getting lost in his landscapes in search for sublime emotions within carefully composed images. This must be what I call the highbrow end of the Search for the ‘Waldo’.

Ivan Riquelme · Answer

The 'I Spy' books are one of my favorites. Brilliant compositions and perfect lighting, photography by Walter Wick that is so good it is art. Not just for children, 'I Spy: Super Challenger' or 'I Spy: Fantasy' are great challenges for adults too. 'The Photographer’s Eye' would be a good adult version, a book of studies examining the composition of photographs, the reader having to search for leading lines etc to use as a frame within a scene. It will make you a better hunter in the real world, make you look at your surroundings in a different way. That’s wonder that lasts.

KiddTheGoddess · Answer

Finding ‘Waldo’ for grown-ups is a whole mood. Okay, fine. I get it. You are looking for something more than a guy in a striped shirt. However, many of the ‘I Spy’ books for kids have been upgraded to sophisticated offerings for adults, such as The Where’s Waldo? of Art, Museum Activity Books, and even new Explorer anthologies by Kazu Kibuishi and The Arrival by Shaun Tan. Journey by Aaron Becker is another wordless novel that demands great close attention as you follow the main character through space. If you want more of a puzzle-type activity, you could start with the book that started it all, Masquerade by Kit Williams, a classic hidden-object treasure hunt. But, honestly, finding ‘Waldo’ for adults is less about finding one character and more about a very complex visual that provides great reward after considerable time and patience. It is a specific kind of relaxation, you know?

It’s a specific kind of relaxation, you know?

Books Like Where'S Waldo? The Wonder Book For Adults?

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