🕮 The Hidden Books Game 2022 🕮

Ah, November; deadline season for my archaeology essays, and more importantly: the Hidden Books Game returns!

This is the fourth or fifth time I’ve attempted to do it – all without success. I think my highest score is 12 out of 20? But this year, I’ve read so many books spanning numerous time periods and genres, that I am determined to get more than this!

And don’t worry: I’m not going to spoil any of the answers for this year’s puzzle in this article 😊

Read more: 🕮 The Hidden Books Game 2022 🕮

November 10^th 2022 saw the launch of the 10^th Hidden Books Challenge. Run by National Book Tokens, where 20 novels ranging from classic literature to popular new releases are hidden throughout a scene. The selected books change every year, and it’s up to the participants to guess them!

Fun, right!

National Book Tokens does have a prize though – if the quest for literacy supremacy isn’t enough for you! The grand prize is a £500 token to spend in bookshops across the country, with a further 10 runners-up receiving a token worth £150. Plus, anyone who is signed up with NBT’s Caboodle system can earn 50 points just for attempting! (get 650 points and you can earn a free book!) plus Caboodlers (I think that’s the term!) can enter a different competition to win all 20 of the books listed in this year’s puzzle.

There are always a few easy ones that you can get almost straight away; it just so happens one or two of the selected are ones I’d read recently so they were almost immediately guessed! A few simple puns for children’s books and right away; up to 5/20.

An excellent start if I do say so myself!

A pattern of the hardback edition on a dress, or a visual pun (which is what the Hidden Books Game thrives on!) for a children’s classic, couldn’t get in my way. Even a few wrong turns here and there – the table clue this year had me focused on the detail rather than the full picture and its meaning, a common tripping hazard I saw many people were also caught out by.

And yes! Whilst this is an individual competition, that doesn’t mean it is time to go in with teeth bared and fighting to the bitter end. In fact, whenever I’ve taken part it’s been one of the calmest and most welcoming events of the year. The Twitter hashtag (or whatever it will be in 2023) and the Facebook comments are full of people giving hints and encouraging one another.

I found myself talking with published authors and those who work at other publication companies among the many readers taking part on their lunch break. National Book Tokens even awards some of the more creative hints with a small voucher – nothing like an incentive, but the vast majority don’t do it for that. The love of literature is more than enough.

As someone who far surpassed her reading goal for the year back in August, I still hadn’t read all 20 of the books on this list. I knew about most, whether from booktubers or just a casual browse of Waterstones on a Monday afternoon.

And if you’re anything like me, you’ll be kicking yourself when you realise the obvious play on words where it had been staring you in the face for 45 minutes. There were definitely a few of those this time around!

I was up to 10/20 when I was joined in my endeavour by a flatmate (and a few in-person suggestions by their sister) trying to decipher the second half. It’s also worth noting that while we did need a few hints from Twitter (and I gave a few in return) the out of the blue screaming text messages had me laughing until it hurt. Heavens knows what people passing my room thought as they heard me moving from hysterical laughter to cursing the name of a novel adaptation I watched four times this year.

But we did it! In just over 90 minutes we managed to find the last ten and for the first time ever – I completed the challenge!

I suppose this is the part of the article where I tell you what I learned, and some mysterious pull to how knowing a puzzle led me to be a better person.

Oh no; it meant that I walked to Waterstones the same afternoon and bought another 3 books from my TBR. And then bought another when I visited Winchester the week after. The book trolly which sits pride of place in my flat is looking rather library-esque now, and this puzzle has given me ideas of other books to read in 2023…