Which newspaper published the first crossword puzzles? What do you call a phrase that reads the same from left to right as it does from right to left? What is the origin of the word “carajillo”? How did the Marx Brothers create their famous world puzzles? Why is the acronym MDT found on the door of an important religious museum in Tarragona? What are logoglyphs or lipograms? What is the answer to the famous riddle of the Sphinx? How do spies decipher their secret messages?

Manual d'Enigmística unites all the answers to these and other riddles. In this book, first published in 1991 and republished in a revised version in 2002, Màrius Serra lays the foundations for his subsequent essays on verbal ingenuity.