The Puzzle Instinct: The Meaning of Puzzles in Human Life

This is an overview of the origins of the puzzle in human history, as well as a more detailed look at the various types in existence, complete with some examples. It also mentions some of the famous puzzle makers of history, and the influence of puzzles on mathematics and science and vice versa.

Twenty-five years ago, there was a boom in sales of a fist-sized ingenious contraption of plastic, a fractured cube of multi-colored sides, the pieces of which could be twisted so that all the six faces had different colors (easy) or back to the one configuration where each face had only its own color (hard). The ubiquitous Rubik's Cube came and went (well, it is a puzzle classic in its simplicity; you can still buy it, but the fad is gone), but there will be some other puzzle fad not long from now. The urge to figure out puzzles seems to be as ingrained in human personality as the urge to make language or art. In _The Puzzle Instinct: The Meaning of Puzzles in Human Life_ (Indiana University Press), Marcel Danesi, a professor of semiotics and anthropology, tries to figure out the meta-puzzle: life has lots of mysteries and complications. Why should we want to manufacture more?Danesi's book turns out to be a spirited review of puzzle history, and the history is a long one. The _Ahmes Papyrus_, nearly four thousand years old, is one of the earliest surviving documents of civilization anywhere, and is essentially a series of mathematical puzzles. It is significant that its title is _Directions for Attaining Knowledge of All Dark Things_. Charlemagne, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire, had a puzzle-maker on staff, and King Louis XIII of France had a Royal Anagrammatist. A description of Rubik's Cube is included, of course, as well as many other puzzle fads. The popularity of crossword puzzles is undimmed since they were introduced in the _New York World_ in 1913; the original one is reproduced here. Crosswords became an overnight sensation, and many people still have to do their crossword puzzle every day. Anyone familiar with puzzle literature will find much familiar here; classics like the Towers of Hanoi, magic squares (the best one is by Benjamin Franklin), the River-Crossing Puzzle, and various optical illusions are all included. The puzzle that gives us the exhortation "Think outside the box" is here, as is the four-color map theorem, Archimedes's Cattle Problem, cryptograms, and tangrams. No one reading this book could deny that making and solving puzzles is a universal human trait.But why? Danesi finally comes to no certain conclusion, but there are some good reasons that he presents. One is that all of us enjoy the "Aha!" experience, the inexplicable flash of insight that can present an answer to something the likes of which we have never before encountered. Puzzles are escapism, but of a peculiar form invoking anxiety and curiosity after the puzzle is presented and pleasurably relieved only by finding the solution (or looking in the answer section). The most satisfactory answer is that like pure science, solving puzzles has been good for us. It is certainly true that working on puzzles is pleasurable, and can be instructive for the individuals trying to figure them out. In a larger sense (and this is a theme presented