A puzzle is a problem that challenges the mind, stimulates thinking for potential solutions and provides a rewarding experience upon solving it. Many games such as solitaire, chess and checkers include numerous puzzles. Other common game-puzzles include crossword puzzles, which appear daily in nearly every newspaper around the world, jigsaw puzzles, and the mechanical puzzle Rubik’s Cube.
Puzzles are the reflection of the human tendency towards curiosity and may be as old as language. The earliest puzzles in history date to the 2nd millennium BC in the Middle East. The oldest written riddle is inscribed on a tablet that dates to Babylonian (Iraq) times (beginning about 2000 BC). The earliest known physical puzzle is the huge labyrinth constructed by Pharaoh Amenemhet III in the vicinity of Lake Moeris, Egypt. It dates to the 19th century BC and was described by ancient Greek historian Herodotus in his 5th-century-BC writings. Mathematical puzzles are believed to have originated with the development of Arithmetic in Egypt and Babylonia during the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC.
During the period from the 5th century to the 15th century there was interest in mathematical puzzles, as well as puzzle-vessels (jugs or mugs with hidden tubes) and mazes. A text of 56 mathematical puzzles, Propositiones ad Acuendos Juvenes (Problems to Sharpen the Young), was written by the 9th-century English scholar Alcuin. In the same century, Muhammad ibn Musá ibn Shakir, of Baghdad (Iraq), described 100 pneumatic and mechanically operated puzzle-vessels and trick-vessels in Kitab al-hiyal (The Book of Ingenious Devices, translated in 1979).
During the last half of the 19th century, many types of puzzles were designed by Sam Loyd, from the United States, and Henry Dudeney, from Great Britain; each of whom is considered the greatest puzzle inventor of his respective country.
Puzzles can be grouped into three broad classes: riddles and word puzzles, mathematical and logic puzzles, and physical and mechanical puzzles.
Many recreational puzzles have led to important developments in mathematics and logic study including digital logic. As an example, topology and graph theory have their origins in the analysis of a popular puzzle by the great Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler. The puzzle is to find a path over the seven bridges of Königsberg, Germany, without travelling over the same bridge twice.
Some of the first number puzzles were included in an important ancient Egyptian mathematical document composed about 1650 BC and known as the Rhind Papyrus. Magic squares, another early form of number puzzle, originated in China before the end of the 1st century. A magic square puzzle forms a square array of numbers so that the rows, columns and major diagonals may all have equal sums.
In 1924, Henry Dudeney published a popular number puzzle of the type known as a cryptarithm, in which letters are replaced with numbers. Dudeney’s puzzle reads: SEND + MORE = MONEY. Cryptarithms are solved by deducing numerical values from the mathematical relationships indicated by the letter arrangements. The only solution to Dudeney’s problem: 9567 + 1085 = 10,652.
Geometric puzzles were studied by the Greek mathematician Archimedes in the 3rd century BC. The Loculus of Archimedes is a dissection puzzle in which a square is cut into 14 pieces that are to be reassembled (a type of put-together puzzle) to form the silhouettes of people, animals or objects. In 1902 Dudeney published another type of geometric puzzle: cut an equilateral (equal-sided) triangle into four pieces that can be reassembled into a square. Some geometric puzzles or cases will be presented in detail through the site.
Logic puzzles are puzzles that require deductive reasoning with little or no numerical calculation. Logic puzzles and paradoxes were part of the study of logic in the 4th century BC by Greek philosophers, including Aristotle. Zeno of Elea wrote famous paradoxes that attempted to prove that apparently obvious sensory experiences, such as the perception of motion, are in fact impossible. In the 19th century, Lewis Carroll popularized several logic puzzles in story-books such as “A Tangled Tale” (1880). Many paradoxes presented here in this book are lots of fun once you have solved them.
Puzzles are not closed problems; they can always be modified or improved to generate a myriad of variants. What’s more; they don’t require batteries; they are just powered by our own brain cells! To solve the perplexing and tricky puzzles you find in this book, you will need a very high IQ—not the usual and controversial ‘Intelligence Quotient’, but Inveniens Quaerendo (“Trial and Error”, your capacity for learning by attempting). Intelligence is not what you FEEL or what you KNOW, but a PROBLEM- SOLVING SKILL. Everyone can acquire or develop problem-solving skills simply by training himself at his own pace and relying on his existing knowledge. In the world of the mind, the race goes not always to the swift, but to those who keep running. Even if the beginning may be discouraging, things will get better and better just by planning regular puzzle training sessions.
To conclude, remember: “intelligence begins with a piece of paper, a pencil and… a problem to solve!”. The ancient Greeks used to say: (“Archê hêmisy pantos”, starting on a job is half the job done)… Now it is time to lean your brain forward and start thinking!
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