A Brief History of Puzzles: Baffling Brainteasers from the Sphinx to Sudoku

by William Hartston

From ancient riddles to modern Sudoko, people have been fascinated by puzzles. Whether they are seen as a glorious waste of time, a harmless way to spend a train journey or a valuable way of exercising the mind, the lure of puzzles has been irresistible. By using over 100 examples of the most mindbending, the most challenging, the most satisfying, or simply the most humorous puzzles throughout the ages, William Hartston traces the development of brainteasers of all varieties and the increasing ingenuity of puzzle setters from ancient civilizations to modern puzzle crazes.

Genres: Nonfiction

161 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 7, 2019

About the author

Full name: William Roland Hartston.

Reviews

[Ramu Vairavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a quick intro to the variety of puzzles out there and some of the key people who have contributed to their development, including familiar names like Lewis Carroll, Henry Dudeney and Sam Loyd, but also others less familiar to me, e.g. Arthur Wynne (inventor of the crossword puzzle) and Raymond Smullyan (inventor of Knights and Knaves puzzles and retro analysis chess problems). It did not cover everything and everyone, but I think that was not the goal of the author.

The book provides interesting trivia and stories behind classic puzzles. I learnt about how the first jigsaws were dissected maps, how Carroll's word ladders caught on while his syzygies failed, and about word squares that are akin to magic squares.

I was also surprised to learn that the author himself had coined the term ditloid (1DitLoID ≡ 1 Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), which is a type of word puzzle. With his experience in the puzzle world, he's picked out representative examples of each type of puzzle, and ordered them appropriately to show how puzzle crafters have built on what came before. He also stresses the benefits play has for gray - use it or lose it!

I noticed that puzzle setters and designers have come from all walks of life - Smullyan was a magician and concert pianist, Dudeney was a mathematician, Rubik an architect and professor, Carroll a writer of children's fiction and Loyd a chess player. My takeaway is that the allure of puzzles is simply universal.

[Bart Van Loon · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a puzzle-setter in the escape room business, I couldn't resist getting a copy of Hartston's book after a good friend informed me about its existence. After finishing it, I'm not really convinced that I know much more about the "history of puzzles", however. Perhaps a better title would have been "categorisation of puzzles", as only the first few chapters dig into some brief historical research.

The format of the book is text interspersed with related puzzles. That sounds nice enough, but I quickly realised that I was never in the mood for solving the puzzles when I wanted to read about them. So I stopped trying and just went straight for the solutions presented at the end. :-)

The book ends with a prize puzzle. I can't compete since I don't have an address in the UK, but I don't find myself motivated to even try it. As the book continued, the author put in more and more of his own puzzles (not without bragging about their ingenuity) and I never found these to be particularly engaging.

So, in short, it's a nice little work definitely giving some insight into the classification of puzzles, presenting an overview of the classics and highlighting some master puzzle setters from past and present. Don't expect much more, however.

[Bart · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5
Interesante pero demasiado brief. Es mas una colección de puzzles con cierto contexto histórico.
Algunos juegos de palabras que no había visto fueron lo mas interesante.