What Is a Puzzle?
The Random House Dictionary de?¬? nes a puzzle as ???a toy or other contrivance designed to amuse by presenting
di?¬? culties to be solved by ingenuity or patient e?¬? ort.??? A humorous but insightful de?¬? nition is ???a
simple task with a bad user interface.??? For example, twisting the faces of a Rubik??™s Cube is a deliberately bad
user interface for the simple task of turning all the faces solid colors.
My favorite de?¬? nition of ???puzzle??? came out of a conversation with puzzle collector and longtime friend
Stan Isaacs:
A puzzle is fun,
and it has a right answer.
Part 1 of the de?¬? nition says that puzzles are a form of play. Part 2 distinguishes puzzles from other forms
of plays, such as games and toys. This deceptively simple de?¬? nition has some interesting consequences.
For example, here??™s the ?¬? rst puzzle I invented. (Martin Gardner ?¬? rst wrote about it in Games magazine.)
The ?¬? gure below is a le er of the alphabet that has been cut out of paper and folded just once. It is not the
le er L. What le er is it?
1.
2.
Figure 1 What le er has been folded
once to make this shape?
36 Chapter 2: The Structure of Games
Take a moment to solve this puzzle if you like.
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