11 Amazing Fun Facts About Puzzles: Boost Your Brain and Impress Your Friends!
1. 40,320 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle
If you thought untangling the mysteries of your grandmother's knitting was daunting, take a fruit from the Jigsaw Tree: The largest jigsaw puzzle on record boasts a jaw-dropping 40,320 pieces, designed by German game masters Ravensburger, making it a Herculean challenge for even the most dedicated puzzle fanatics.
Source => en.wikipedia.org
2. The 10th Century Square Puzzle
Before Sudoku and Rubik's Cube had a baby and called it a square puzzle: mathematician Abu'l Wafa' was slicing and dicing squares back in the tenth century! His nine-piece solution for cutting a square into three identical squares paved the way for nerdy delights like Christian Blanvillain's Quadratum Cubicum, which boasts nine square trisection puzzles for your entertainment.
Source => mypuzzlecollection.blogspot.com
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=> Fun Facts about Board-Games
3. The American Roots of Sudoku
It's hip to be a square: a number square, that is! While you might be tempted to bow down to Japan or Switzerland for blessing us with the mesmerizing Sudoku, it's actually our homegrown American brainchild, concocted in the late '70s by Dell Puzzle Magazines and originally named "Number Place." Our friends in Japan revamped the game a touch, gifted it the catchy title "Sudoku," and passed it on to the world, where Wayne Gould of New Zealand fame put it in overdrive with his instant Sudoku-generating computer program.
Source => theguardian.com
4. The Elegant Pentominoes
Before Tetris came screaming into our lives on tiny pixelated screens – and there's no denying its blocky charms – there were the Pentominoes, a more dignified and thoughtful cast of geometric characters waiting for their turn in the puzzle spotlight: These elegant brain-teasers are comprised of 12 unique shapes, each constructed from 5 squares, and the concept is said to have first emerged in a 1907 puzzler by Henry Ernest Dudeny. Solomon W. Golomb officially coined the term "pentominoes" in 1953, and today, devotees of these T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, F, I, L, P, and N shaped enigmas delight in creating intricate two and three-dimensional configurations, or engaging in tiling and checkerboard games with these fascinating forerunners to our modern-day pixilated distractions.
Source => web.ma.utexas.edu
5. Archimedes' Ostomachion
Before Tetris took geometry lessons and ran with them, Archimedes was kicking it old school with bones and squares: The Ostomachion, a puzzle attributed to Archimedes, involved arranging 14 bone pieces to create a square with a whopping 17,152 different configurations, used to form various animals, plants, and objects. While the true purpose of this ancient cerebral workout remains a mystery, Archimedes likely scattered the pieces just to watch young minds scramble for answers.
Source => en.wikipedia.org
6. Houdini Puzzle Lock
Once upon a lock, a famous escape artist shared his logic of making things mysteriously unlockable: Lo and behold, the Houdini Puzzle Lock was born! This enigmatic contraption, available in Dead Lock and Lock & Key styles, can only be cracked open by those privy to the secret trick, immortalizing Harry Houdini's knack for baffling others with confounding designs. Snatch one of these perplexing padlocks from ThinkGeek.com for $19.99 and dazzle your friends with your magical Houdini-esque abilities!
Source => geekalerts.com
7. The Hunt for the Golden Hare
Before Harry Potter had everyone searching for Horcruxes, there was a golden hare that had Britain's puzzle enthusiasts going absolut-hare-ly mad: 'Masquerade,' a book from the 1980s by Kit Williams, concealed clues pointing to a real-life treasure - a jeweled golden hare - hidden somewhere in Great Britain. However, the first "winner," Dugald Thompson, turned out to be a hare-brained trespasser who had cheated his way to the loot via insider knowledge; the true victors were two British physics teachers who brilliantly unraveled Williams' riddles.
Source => en.wikipedia.org
8. Ellis Island's Facial Feature Test
Before Tinder, Ellis Island had its own unique way of swiping left: immigrants in the early 1900s took a facial feature puzzle called The Feature Profile Test to assess their ability to recognize and identify facial attributes. This puzzling exercise, crafted by Dr. Howard Knox, aimed to conquer language barriers but also assisted eugenics enthusiasts in determining who was deserving to enter the land of the free.
Source => npr.org
9. Puzzle-Solving Health Benefits
Whoever said laughter is the best medicine never tried solving puzzles: research finds that puzzle-solving boosts IQ, problem-solving skills, critical thinking, and memory, while unleashing dopamine to enhance concentration and motor skills – truly, the Sherlock Holmes of the intellectual gym!
Source => nextstepu.com
10. The Whale-Sized Jigsaw Puzzle
Puzzle enthusiasts, say "Cheese!" – because someone, somewhere, managed to put together a jigsaw puzzle the size of a whale in a party hat: In 2012, the world's largest jigsaw puzzle boasted 551,232 pieces, measuring 27 feet by 6 feet, and was made by German company Ravensburger. It took a dedicated team of 40 puzzlers a mind-boggling 17 weeks to assemble this monstrous masterpiece!
Source => puzzleaday.wordpress.com
11. The Kepler-37 e Water World
If you ever wished for a never-ending pool party or felt the urge to develop webbed feet – boy, do we have the perfect planet for you: Kepler-37 e, a potential ocean world with no dry land in sight, is packed with a mass below 5 Earth masses, a density of 2.98 grams per cubic centimeter, and a semi-major axis of 0.246 astronomical units, making it a wet and wild paradise in the cosmos!
Source => gravitysimulator.org
