ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the origin, history, and connection of puzzles to human thought and culture. Riddles have the same structure and it is for this reason that they can be called puzzles, even though there are some key differences between riddles and other puzzle inventions. Solving a puzzle is very much like a dream where the parts cohere spontaneously into wholes by themselves. The study of the anthropological meanings of puzzles, riddles, and games can be assigned the general rubric of enigmatology, as mentioned in the Preface. The English word puzzle, as used today, encompasses everything from riddles and crosswords to Sudoku, optical illusions, and brainteasers in logic and mathematics. Puzzles and games put the mind’s resources on display, including imagination, reasoning, memory, trial-and-error, inference, association, analogy, logic, and so on. It is impossible to predict beforehand which of these modes are deployed in tandem.
