1. The inventor of the Rubik’s Cube didn’t realize he’d built a puzzle until he scrambled it the first time and tried to restore it. – Source
2. The day before the 1996 U.S. presidential election, the NYT Crossword contained the clue “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper,” the puzzle was built so that both electoral outcomes were correct answers, requiring 7 other clues to have dual responses. – Source
3. In 2011, people playing Foldit, an online puzzle game about protein folding, resolved the structure of an enzyme that causes an Aids-like disease in monkeys. Researchers had been working on the problem for 13 years. The gamers solved it in three weeks. – Source
4. Will Shortz, the New York Times crossword puzzle editor, is the only person in the world to have a degree in enigmatology, the study of puzzles. – Source
5. There is a cryptic organization called Cicada 3301 that posts challenging puzzles online, possibly to recruit codebreakers and linguists. – Source
2. The day before the 1996 U.S. presidential election, the NYT Crossword contained the clue “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper,” the puzzle was built so that both electoral outcomes were correct answers, requiring 7 other clues to have dual responses. – Source
3. In 2011, people playing Foldit, an online puzzle game about protein folding, resolved the structure of an enzyme that causes an Aids-like disease in monkeys. Researchers had been working on the problem for 13 years. The gamers solved it in three weeks. – Source
4. Will Shortz, the New York Times crossword puzzle editor, is the only person in the world to have a degree in enigmatology, the study of puzzles. – Source
5. There is a cryptic organization called Cicada 3301 that posts challenging puzzles online, possibly to recruit codebreakers and linguists. – Source