A bottle and a cork cost a dollar ten cents.
The bottle costs a dollar more than the cork.
How much does the cork cost?
-- Puzzle given to Paul Niquette by his father in 1939.
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solution was wrong, of course. Same as everybody else's during the
seven decades that have followed. But that day I was shown how to
solve it, and something wonderful lighted up my six-year-old cranium. The
moment marked the beginning of a penchant for solving puzzles -- and later
on, for creating puzzles, thereby offering others the pleasure of
finding solutions.
Within fifty years, the Internet asserted its primacy.
What better venue will there ever be for sharing puzzles with the world!
A search on the web for "puzzles online"
produces hits by the tens of millions. Heck, you will find more than
a hundred entries listed in the table of contents at
Puzzles
with a Purpose. By the way, one of those puzzles has a grown-up
title, Counter-Intuitive Cork.
Here are some observations about that on-line collection...
Whatever the formal definition,
each puzzle is supposed to be a friendly test of the solver's reasoning
and knowledge, with the latter augmented by materials from all over the
web. Solving each puzzle may be mere entertainment, but...
-- hey, does the word 'mere' really belong in front of
'entertainment'?
A puzzle might bring parent and child together through
words (Wholly Toledo) or graphics
(Droodle Generation) or elementary
arithmetic (Gold on the Wing).
A puzzle designed for a juvenile (Train
Speed) can confound an adult but...
-- hey, why not vice versa (Riddle...or
Hoax)?
Most surprising is the discovery that a puzzle can produce
an original discovery (Reaman
Numeral). A puzzle ought to be a learning experience for the
solver (Erg and Ugh, Mythical
Muses, Steamboat Hill, Natural
Hypoteneese) but...
-- hey, why not for the creator (Strange
Series)? |
The idea of the puzzle is to invite passive
readers
to become active
solvers. By convention, the published
solution is necessarily kept separated from the puzzle. Solvers must wait
for the next publication cycle or suffer some other form of inconvenience,
like looking up the denouement on a different page or upside down
in fine print. On the web, the solution is one click away.
Suspense is thus self regulated.
 -publication
opens up a galaxy of new conventions. The power of transclusion
by hypertext deserves
highest consideration. Optional links augment the content of both
puzzle and solution. Gaps in a solver's knowledge get filled in instantly
for the occasion at hand -- and beyond. Acquiring new knowledge cannot
be avoided, as this singular tool-of-the-web exploits and satisfies the
solver's curiosities (plural).
Paperless delivery makes conservation of space
meaningless. Indeed, hyphen-
ation of words at the end of a line makes no sense and
impairs reading. Same for right justification and small
font size. Sidebars and footnotes can apply
many graphical options. Puzzles especially benefit from all the features
of on-line publication.
Everybody knows that there are two general categories
for literature: fiction and nonfiction. Puzzles can be fiction
but their solutions must be nonfiction! Please note the exclamatory
punctuation. When one thinks of nonfiction,
some twenty genres
come readily to mind...
Almanac
Biography
Diary
Dictionary
Documentary |
Encyclopedia
Essay
History
Journalism
Letter |
Manual
Memoir
Philosophy
Reference
Review |
Science
Scripture
Statute
Textbook
Travelogue |
Something seems to be missing on that list. Isn't
it about time for a new genre? Meanwhile...
 ver
a decade, Puzzles with a Purpose evolved from simple (Band
Around the Earth) and terse (Genesis
Won One) to complex (Next Superbowl)
and verbose (Sloping in the Dark).
Puzzles and their solutions, unfettered by the conservation of paper, are
free to express any amount of literary content, in the form of both essays
and narratives. Whereas each puzzle necessarily stands alone alongside
its solution, some puzzles became linked to others. Thus, a half-dozen
themes have emerged. They are listed here with representative examples...
A few puzzles may have made original contributions in
science (To Billow or Not to Billow),
technology (Single Tracking),
and mathematics (Circloid).
Inasmuch as the solver's powers of observation are called into play, a
puzzle and its solution might even result in original insights into a baffling
mystery. Permit me to illustrate...
 he
puzzle Which
way, Amelia? was created with an exceptionally ambitious objective:
To solve the greatest mystery in aviation history, the disappearance
of Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan during their 1937 flight
around the world. Theories and speculations and myths appear on a
million websites pertaining to this fascinating story. An on-line
bibliography
lists more than a hundred published works claiming to solve the mystery.
Given all that, what might one puzzle hope to accomplish?
Not enough, apparently. It actually took ten puzzles...
As puzzles are expected to do, these entries identify
unknowns and solve for them. Acting together, they address the most
critical issues in Amelianna. Then too, there are unknowables
in the historical record and popular narratives. That means
solvers must make assumptions.
Whether these puzzles accomplished the objective
of actually solving the Amelia Earhart mystery with finality --
well, such a judgment is not within the scope of the present essay.
There are three dozen links among the individual puzzles,
binding them together to form a coherent whole, transcending disparate
topics. The ten Earhart/Noonan puzzles total 20,000 words and include 40
illustrations. More than a hundred text passages were brought
in from worldwide resources. With its transclusions, that would amount
to a ten-chapter book -- if the set were ever printed out on paper.
 ited
above are puzzles that, truth be known, came about by inadvertance as much
as by design. Over a period of months, individual entries arose almost
spontaneously, each standing alone. As originally published, several puzzles
and their solutions were marked "work-in-process." Comments and criticisms
received from solvers near and far influenced the contents. New puzzles
were added and gradually brought into confluence with the others.
Whether these particular aggregations will wind up in
a book-like manuscript remains to be seen, but -- hey, length is irrelevant.
Indeed, a stand-alone puzzle qualifies for the new literary genre, especially
one enriched with hypertext-intensive features. Care to share your
thoughts?
Problematics as a Literary
Genre
hat
was the working title for an early draft of this essay. Because
of its resemblance to mathematics,
problematics
was thought by the author to have more gravitas
than
puzzle. A check in OneLook
found these quick definitions for problematic
(without the 's')...
-
open to doubt or debate ("If you ever get married, which seems to be extremely
problematic")
-
making great mental demands; hard to comprehend or solve ("A problematic
situation at home")
Such undesirable characterizations are confirmed in 29 dictionaries
on the web, each giving emphasis to the embedded problem, which
since antiquity has always been -- well, problematic...
c.1600, shortening of problematical (1560s), from Late Latin problematicus,
from Greek problematikos "pertaining to a problem," from problematos,
genitive of problema (see problem)...
Some 44 online dictionaries have definitions for problem
that are distinguished from that of puzzle and not always amenable
to solution. Here is how Oxford Dictionary defines
problem...
-
matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be
dealt with and overcome.
An unappealing connotation is reinforced by one dictionary
that gives problematics (with the 's')
a plural definition: "the uncertainties or difficulties inherent
in a situation or plan."
Life is not a problem to be solved, but
a mystery to be lived. -- Thomas
Merton
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Another web reference
provides usage examples for problematics,
all decidedly gloomy...
-
"Gradation addresses one of the key problematics
of metaphysics that arise from Aristotelianism: 'being is predicated in
many ways' (Aristotle, Met.1028a10)."—Mulla Sadra
-
"Beyond that, Clinton ducked the dynasty issue and the problematics
of a co-presidency." —Hillary On Bill: I Understand That 'Its
A Lonely Job In The White House
-
"Chava Tidhar and Dafna Lemish found that unique conflict situations, such
as the uprising in the occupied Palestinian territories, sharpen the problematics
of the images of women in television news." —Israeli Media: Portrayal
of Women.
The essay above is ambitious enough without setting upon
the word problematics hoping to engender a
recreational sense for it. Accordingly, the word puzzle...
-
a particularly baffling challenge that is said to
have a correct solution ("He loved to solve chessmate puzzles")
...will just have to develop its own
gravitas as a literary genre.
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