Puzzle

Two people solving a puzzle.

A puzzle of a historic map.

A puzzle of the US-Mexico border.

A puzzle or puzzle is a board game whose objective is to form a figure by correctly combining its parts, which are found in different pieces or flat pieces.

Puzzle Beginnings

The first puzzle was created by John Spilsbury in 1760, an expert in map design. He did this by mounting one of the maps he had created on a hardwood board, cutting it out around the country borders.

This creation was used in Great Britain as an educational hobby, initially to teach geography to children. The idea of its exclusive use in teaching lasted until about 1820.

Puzzles in 1900

Artistic puzzles for adults were born around 1900. These hand-cut wooden puzzles quickly became one of the favorite entertainments of high society.

It was customary to dazzle visitors with these original and elegant pastimes, which due to their unique beauty and exclusivity, became part of the family heritage and tradition. Those hand-cut puzzles had a peculiar style called “push-fit”, due to the way in which they had to be assembled: by following the cut, the contours of the image and the areas of color, the pieces, devoid of knobs, they did not fit together as in today's commercial puzzles, but rather fitted together in the most subtle ways. Thus, the assemblers had to be very careful since a sudden movement or even a sneeze could ruin the patient work of an entire afternoon.

Artistic puzzles for adults, unlike those for children, did not include an image that served as a guide for the assembler, who had to be content with the suggestive reference of the title before sitting down to solve the enigma behind which the craftsman cutter had hidden picture.

This was one of its fundamental incentives and attractions: to reveal little by little, building step by step the hidden work of art, a work of art to which, once the puzzle is solved, we will have paid intense attention that will will reveal even its most hidden details.

Jigsaw puzzles of the 1900s, where the pieces were placed next to each other rather than fit together, were a real challenge and became an absorbing pastime.

Today they are still the most appreciated by those for whom elegance, difficulty and delicacy are the fundamental incentive that prolongs the pleasure of reconstructing and discovering the hidden image.

In the first decade of the 20th century, a famous American toy manufacturer decided to dedicate its entire production to handcrafted wooden puzzles and introduced variations that were very well received by the public: figurative pieces and knobs.

The knobs allowed the pieces to be assembled together, making the puzzle not easily disassembled, and offering the possibility for the pieces to take on new shapes. The figurative pieces, silhouettes of animals, people or recognizable objects, generated great fascination and surprise among the fans; They not only highlighted the skill and imagination of the cutter, but also added mystery and exclusivity to a game that had already been elevated to the status of a work of art.

The experimentation and creation of new forms of artistic cutting throughout the 20th century did not stop, and the best craftsmen introduced novelties such as irregular edges, false corners, and different ways to challenge fans even more.

However, although a few artisans have developed and kept alive the tradition of the hand-cut wooden puzzle for adults, this is a pastime that has all the flavor of another time.

Modern puzzle

In 1762 Londoner John Spilsbury made the first one almost by chance. Spilsbury pasted one of his maps onto a hardwood panel, cutting it out according to country borders with a coping saw. In this way the history of the modern puzzle accidentally began. The final product, novel for its time and initially expensive to manufacture, gradually became a popular educational hobby, designed as a teaching tool to teach British schoolchildren geography. A century later, Milton and McLaughlin Bradley began mass-producing them.

A puzzle is also called a problem or a riddle that is difficult to solve; as well as some types of hobbies.

Video Games

In the field of video games, a puzzle is any problem that arises whose solution is based exclusively on the resolution of a skill test. In this same area, a puzzle also consists of the concatenation of various intermediate objectives during the course of a game that can belong to a different category such as adventure, strategy, action or role-playing. Example: Professor Layton and the Mysterious Villa.

Physical and mechanical puzzles

As for mechanical or manual puzzles, in addition to Archimedes' Loculus, also called Stomachion ('problem to go crazy'), those invented by John Spilsbury around 1760 as an educational game stand out, which can be found among the most famous examples of this class. The Chinese Tangram, popular since 1800, uses seven geometrically shaped pieces, cut from a square, to form highly suggestive silhouette possibilities of people, animals and things.

The first locks with tricks or combinations to outwit thieves date from the 17th century. At the end of the 19th century, the North American Indians used gimmicked coin purses to store money and gambling dice.

In 1800, the German toy vendor Bestelmeier sold wooden pieces that fit together in the shape of a cross, and since 1970 hundreds of puzzles or polyhedral puzzles have been designed.

The Pentonyms, is another traditional puzzle, which uses pieces composed by the union of 5 dice in a single plane and that allows a high number of combinations to create different figures.

In the 1990s, the first 3D puzzles (invented in Canada by Paul Gallant in 1991) were commercialized, which extended the traditional concept to the assembly of models of three-dimensional figures (such as famous buildings, or various images on a sphere). of the flat puzzle.

Benefits of Puzzles

It strengthens the connections between our brain cells and forming new ones, so they are a great way to improve short-term memory. By using our memory in the process of completing the puzzle when we memorize shapes, sizes and pieces and visualize where they fit together. Research has shown that the growth of new brain connections that are formed helps minimize brain damage in Alzheimer's patients.

Famous puzzles

• Cube of Rubik
• Cube Soma
• Pentamine
• Sokoban
• Tangram
• Hanoi Towers
• Puzzle Eternity