![]() ![]() As soon as it hits the handlebars of the other bike, it flies back to the first one and keeps going, back and forth. There’s a fly on the handlebar of one of the bikes that flies towards the other bike at 15 miles per hour. They’re pedaling towards each other at 10 miles an hour. There are two kids on bicycles and they’re 20 miles apart. “Doing puzzles is like going to the mental gym” I can’t believe I didn’t see that!’ That is a wonderful feeling. What I love about them is they’re the kind of puzzles where when you figure out the answer (or, often, read the answer, because I don’t get them all) you’re like, ‘Oh, yes, of course!’ It’s that feeling of, ‘I should have gotten that. He would present what he called ‘recreational’ mathematics to show that math is not boring. When you talk to puzzlers and mathematicians, it’s shocking the number of them who say that they fell in love with this area because of Martin Gardner’s columns. He was a columnist for Scientific American for decades. He is a superhero, a rockstar in the puzzle world. Basically, it’s a stand-in for any book by Martin Gardner. I actually couldn’t find my copy, but I have a similar book. The publisher blurb suggests these are puzzles 9- to 12-year-olds can do so, hopefully, most people can manage them. So first on your list is My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles by Martin Gardner. There are so many puzzle books that I love! I can’t say that these are objectively the best books ever written about puzzles-I’m not sure I believe in the concept of ‘best’-but these are five that had a big impact on me, some as a kid, some as a college student, and a couple that I discovered in my quest to solve all the puzzles in the world for my book. Who doesn’t want to go and do hundreds of puzzles after hearing that? Which brings us nicely to the puzzle books you’re recommending. So yes, to me, part of the meaning of life is trying to solve the puzzle of the meaning of life. That actually relates to one of the books that I recommended, Gödel, Escher, Bach, which is all about recursion and paradox. Curiosity and looking for the meaning-even if we never find it-is the meaning. That may sound glib, but I truly believe it. I think part of the meaning of life is actually the search for the meaning of life. How do we figure out why we’re here? I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I didn’t 100% figure out the meaning of life. I put that in there because it is the ultimate puzzle. ![]() Is that because part of the reason we like doing puzzles is that it gives us a sense we’re getting closer to understanding that? In the subtitle of your book, you mention the quest for the meaning of life. So that’s another thing I love about puzzles, that search. It’s a more poetic way of saying you have got to embrace the journey. He said you have to embrace the arrow you have to love the search. The question mark is when you first see a puzzle, and you’re baffled the arrow is the struggle for solutions, the exploration and then the exclamation point is that aha moment. He summarized puzzles in three symbols: the question mark, the forward arrow, and the exclamation point. They’re like, ‘Why is it? What is it?’ There’s a great puzzler, Maki Kaji, who is called the godfather of Sudoku. My last book was about gratitude this book is all about curiosity. To me, part of what I love about puzzles is that they fuel my curiosity and I’d say curiosity and gratitude are my two favorite virtues. It all fits together.’ So that is another reason. We live in a world of greys and probabilities and puzzles present us with that Platonic ideal where you can say, ‘Okay, it all makes sense. But with puzzles, there is that one perfect solution. Each is suboptimal and you have to figure out which is the best of the imperfect solutions. There is no one simple answer there are a bunch of answers. Life’s problems are often very complicated. I also think that puzzles are a Platonic ideal of a problem. I get an actual dopamine rush from it, the same chemical that-they say-you get from cocaine and sex and all that. One is the search for the aha moment when you actually solve a puzzle. I’d say there are several things that are alluring about puzzles. Generally, based on yourself and your observation of others, what do you think attracts people to puzzles? Foreign Policy & International RelationsĪs well as being a puzzler yourself, you’ve now spent quite a bit of time with other people who spend a lot of time doing puzzles.
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