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Articles on Puzzles
Displaying 1 - 20 of 26 articles
No complicated formulas are needed to solve these puzzles – just your imagination and a bit of patience.
John solves murders using puzzle techniques, like spot the difference and reverse chess.
NYT’s latest game reveals how our memory works to remember words.
Cold war intrigue and an international legal fight were behind one of the most popular video games ever.
Tangram is accessible yet challenging, and an excellent educational tool. It’s still used in schools today to help illustrate mathematical concepts and develop mathematical thinking skills.
Whether you want to win with as few guesses as possible, or you just want to figure out the right word before running out of turns, a scholar offers some tips.
Like a Scrabble habit, a passion for Wordle isn’t likely to make you smarter or ward off brain aging. But it may give you a daily dose of complex cognition combined with social interaction.
The secret recipe came from Arthur Dee, 17th-century alchemist and royal physician to the Tsar.
Researchers tried several times to have the document declassified, including in 1992, 2004 and 2016. It was initially written to help American NSA agents crack difficult coded messages.
Scrambling it is much easier than solving it. But it still involves some fascinating questions, such as the number of random moves needed to consider the cube truly messed up.
Despite its huge complexity, your brain directs its neural traffic in relatively straightforward ways when approaching cognitively demanding tasks such as puzzles.
A new study suggests that being intellectually engaged does nothing to slow cognitive decline, but it does start the decline from a higher point.
We shouldn’t save play for the playground.
Watching how people play a game against a computer opponent can help identify how humans use – or don’t use – game theory principles to make decisions.
Let’s say you want the perfect mix of friends and strangers at your next party. Mathematicians have been working on a version of this problem for nearly a century, and the answer is complicated.
Put a lamb on an island of lions and they’ll eat it – or will they?
There’s a reason why some people get different answers to those frustrating viral maths problems. You need to learn how to “read” the maths.
He was one of the brilliant mathematical geniuses who helped crack the Nazi codes, but few have ever heard of his name. So who was Bill Tutte?
It could be you.
Top contributors
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Senior Lecturer in Mathematics, Department of Mathematical Sciences, City St George's, University of London
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Research Fellow, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland
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Professor of Psychology, Western University
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Senior Lecturer in Mathematics, University of Bath
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Lecturer in Psychology, University of Buckingham
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Senior Lecturer in Statistics, University of Glasgow
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Associate Professor of Economics, HEC Paris Business School
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Laureate Professor of Mathematics, University of Newcastle
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Associate Professor of Economics, University of Miami
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Professor of Mathematics, The University of Western Australia
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PhD Candidate in Mathematical Sciences, Probability and Applications, Queen Mary University of London
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Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, Western Michigan University
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Professor, Faculty of IT, Monash University
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Professor of Mathematics, Western Michigan University
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Professor of Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College