Tag Archives: intuitive

What Makes a Good Brain Teaser?

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I was going through a collection of brain teasers a fellow puzzler gave me, and it occurs to me that “brain teaser” is one of the least specific puzzle terms around.

Riddles, logic and deduction, math puzzles, and wordplay games all fall under the brain teaser umbrella. So you never know what you’re gonna get. Are your math skills required? Your outside-the-box thinking? Your ability to pay attention to the specifics of the question itself?

In this collection alone, I found examples of each of these types of puzzles:

Riddle: Sometimes I’m green, sometimes I’m black. When I’m yellow, I’m a very nice fellow. That’s when I’m feeling mighty a-peeling. What am I?

Logic / deduction: 3 guys go into a hardware store, all looking for the same thing. William buys 1 for $1. Billy buys 99 for $2. Finally, Willie buys 757 for $3. What were they buying?

Math puzzle: The sum is 12 and the same digit is used 3 times to create the sum. Since the digit is not 4, what is the digit?

Wordplay: Which state capitals would you visit to find a ram, cord, bus, and dove?

So, if someone challenged you to a brain teaser, these would all be fair game. Would you be able to solve all four of them?

It’s possible you wouldn’t, because good and bad brain teasers alike employ tricks to keep you on your toes.

Some hide the answer in plain sight:

Homer’s mother has 4 children. 3 of them are named Spring, Summer, and Autumn. What is the 4th named?

Some use misdirection, purposely phrasing the question to get you thinking one way and steering you away from the real solution:

The big man in the butcher shop is exactly 6’4″ tall. What does he weigh?

In fact, both of these examples use plain sight (Homer, butcher shop) and misdirection (implying a pattern with seasons, specifying his height) to distract you.

I suspect you weren’t fooled by either of them, though.

Others try to overwhelm you with information so you bog yourself down in the details instead of clearly analyzing the problem at hand:

Nina and Lydia start from their home and each runs 2 miles. Nina can run a mile in 8 minutes 30 seconds and Lydia can run a mile in 9 minutes 10 seconds. When they finish running, what is the furthest apart they can be?

A lot of numbers get thrown at you, but they’re irrelevant, since the question only asks about the distance, not the time. So if they each run 2 miles, the furthest apart they can be is 4 miles. The rest is just smoke.

These are all effective techniques for teasing a solver’s brain. You’re given all the information you need to solve the puzzle, plus a little extra to distract, mislead, or overwhelm you.

Unfortunately, some brain teasers use unfair techniques to try to stump you:

Jacob and Seth were camping in June. Before going to sleep they decided to read a book. They both agreed to stop reading when it got dark. They were not fast readers, but they finished the entire encyclopedia. How?

Ignoring the fact that these two boys somehow brought an entire encyclopedia with them on a camping trip, we’re not actually given a lot of information here.

So that makes the intended answer seem like more of an insane leap than a logical jump to the conclusion: They were in Lapland, land of the midnight sun, and the sun didn’t set until September.

WHAT?

There’s no reasonable way for someone to reach this conclusion based on the information given. In fact, it makes less sense the more you read it. Presumably Jacob and Seth know where they are camping, and that it wouldn’t get dark for months. So why would Jacob and Seth agree to stop reading when it got dark IF THAT MEANT THEY’D BE READING UNTIL SEPTEMBER!?

This is gibberish, and you’d be surprised how often something like this gets passed off as acceptable in a collection of brain teasers. (I discussed a similar issue with detective riddles in a previous blog post.)

Let’s close out today’s discussion of the ins and outs of brain teasers with a few fun, fair examples, shall we?

  • In what northern hemisphere city can you find indigenous tigers and lions?
  • Scientists have found that cats are furrier on one side than the other. The side with the most fur is the side that cats most often lie on. Which side of a cat has more fur?
  • A woman married over 50 men without ever getting divorced. None of the men died and no one thought she acted improperly. Why?

Did you solve them all? Let us know! Also, please share your favorite brain teasers (or your tales of treacherous and unfair brain teasers) in the comments below!

Happy puzzling, everyone!

A Video Game Puzzle That Baffled People Twice, Thirty Years Apart

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In the past, we’ve discussed the topic of intuitive puzzles vs. non-intuitive puzzles.

Non-intuitive puzzles used to be the bane of many video game fans — so much so that they spawned an infamous trope, That One Puzzle, describing a puzzle with a solution so utterly non-intuitive that it bordered on the nonsensical. One of the most infamous came from the Monkey Island series, where you needed a wrench, but instead of just finding one, you had to hypnotize a monkey with a banana on a metronome and use IT as your monkey wrench.

See what I mean about nonsensical?

These days you’re more likely to encounter a non-intuitive puzzle in an escape room or other physical puzzly activity than a video game.

But today, we have a doozy of an example for you. This non-intuitive puzzle managed to baffle people twice… thirty years apart.

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StarTropics was a video game released for the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990. It featured a protagonist named Mike, who was visiting his scientist uncle in the South Seas. Mike wielded a yo-yo and had to search for his missing uncle, eventually exploring the island, the ocean, and outerspace along the way.

The game became famous for a non-intuitive puzzle that baffled many players. At one point in the game, you needed to find a three-digit code to utilize a transceiver your uncle had in his shoe. The only clue was “dip my note in water.”

But there was no way to do this in-game.

The solution was simple, but eluded many players because it wasn’t in-game. It was something the players actually had to do.

You see, there was a physical letter from the uncle included with the instruction manual to the game. That was the note you had to dip in water to reveal the three-digit code.

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So, yes, the game did tell you what to do, but it’s not intuitive because at no other point in the game do you have to do something outside the diegetic space of the game. It’s not like you need to jump up and down to make your character jump.

This sort of fourth wall breaking puzzling can certainly add to the gameplay, but it’s also very confusing for players not familiar with the concept.

For instance, more than one escape room game I’ve encountered outwitted and baffled some players by utilizing images on the game box itself (or even the bar code) as part of a puzzle. Since this is “outside” what the player has been told is part of the game — the components inside the box — this is clever, but also unexpected. (An entire video game, File://maniac, was built around this concept.)

That puzzle was confusing enough for players, but it got worse almost thirty years later.

In 2019, the game was ported over to the Nintendo Switch, the latest Nintendo console, allowing a new generation of gamers to rediscover this cult-classic 8-bit adventure.

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Except they forgot about the puzzle and the letter and the dipping into water thing.

So there was literally no way for new players to solve the puzzle, because there was no letter included with the instructions.

This wasn’t the first time StarTropics had been ported over to a new console. But it was the first time they forgot to do something to help players with the letter puzzle. Often, it was a digital copy of the letter, complete with an animation of it being “dipped” into water and revealing the code.

But the Switch version didn’t have that.

So players were stuck.

There’s creating a really non-intuitive outside-the-box puzzle, and then there’s breaking the game entirely by removing the only clue to the solution.

So yeah, StarTropics. A charming game, but baffling in all the wrong ways… twice… thirty years apart.

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Intuitive vs. Non-Intuitive Puzzles

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littlegirlatgrandmas

[Image courtesy of The Spruce Crafts.]

Sometimes, when you look at a puzzle, you know immediately what to do and how to solve. In my opinion, a great deal of Sudoku’s success is due to its intuitive nature. You see the grid, the numbers, and you know how to proceed.

Crosswords are similarly straightforward, with numbered clues and grid squares to guide new solvers. (The “across” and “down” directions also help immensely.)

That’s not to say that these puzzles can’t be off-putting to new solvers, despite their intuitive nature. I know plenty of people who are put off by crosswords simply by reputation, while others avoid Sudoku because they’re accustomed to avoiding ANY puzzle that involves numbers, assuming that some math is involved. (I suspect that KenKen, despite its successes, failed to replicate the wild popularity of Sudoku for similar reasons.)

But plenty of other puzzles require some explanation before you can dive in. A Marching Bands or Rows Garden puzzle, for instance, isn’t immediately obvious, even if the puzzle makes plenty of sense once you’ve read the instructions or solved one yourself.

The lion’s share of pen-and-paper puzzles fall into this category. No matter how eye-catching the grid or familiar the solving style, a solver can’t simply leap right into solving.

Thankfully, this won’t deter most solvers, who gleefully accept new challenges as they come, so long as they are fair and make sense after a minute or so of thought. Cryptic crossword-style cluing is a terrific example of this. At first glance, the clues might appear to be gibberish. But within each clue lurks the necessary tools to unlock it and find the answer word.

Brain teasers often function the same way. You’re presented with a problem — a light bulb you can’t see and three possible switches for it, for instance — and you need to figure out a way to solve it. It might involve deduction, wordplay, or some clever outside-the-box thinking, but once you find the answer, it rarely feels unfair or unreasonable.

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[Image courtesy of Deposit Photos.]

But, then again, there are also puzzles that can baffle you even once you’ve read the instructions and stared at the layout for a few minutes. Either the rules are complex or the solving style so unfamiliar or alien that the solver simply can’t find a way in.

In short, puzzles as a whole operate on a spectrum that spans from intuitive to non-intuitive.

Want an example of baffling or non-intuitive? You got it.

GAMES Magazine once ran a puzzle entitled “Escape from the Dungeon,” where the solver had to locate a weapon in a D&D-style dungeon. A very small crossword puzzle was found in one room on a paper scroll.

But the solution had nothing to do with solving the crossword.

The actual solution was to take the crossword to a magician who removed letters from the fronts of words. Removing the C-R-O-S left you with a sword, completing the overall puzzle.

That sort of thinking is so outside the box that it might as well be in a different store entirely. Video games, particularly ones from the point-and-click era, have more than their fair share of non-intuitive puzzles like this. You can check out these lists for numerous examples.

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And as escape rooms grow in popularity, more of them seem to be succumbing to less intuitive puzzling as a result of trying to challenge solvers.

For example, in one escape room I tried, various fellow participants uncovered two stars, a picture of the three blind mice, and four different items that represented the seasons. Amidst all the locks to open, puzzles to unravel, and secrets to find, it never occurred to any of us that these three unconnected numbers would have to be assembled as a combination to a lock. By asking for a hint, we were able to figure out to put them together and open the lock, but it’s not a terribly intuitive puzzle.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for a puzzle constructor — be it a pen-and-paper puzzle, an escape room scenario, or a puzzle hunt dilemma — is not creating a dynamite, unique puzzle, but ensuring that finding the solution is fair, even if it’s difficult or mind-boggling.

This sort of thinking informs not only my work as a puzzlesmith, but the designs for my roleplaying games as well. If my players encounter a gap, there’s some way across. If there’s a locked door, there’s a way through it. Oftentimes, there’s more than one, because my players frequently come up with a solution that eluded me.

In the end, that’s the point. All puzzles, no matter how difficult, exist for one reason: to be solved. To provide that rush, that a-ha moment, that satisfaction that comes with overcoming the clever, devious creation of another sharp mind.

And non-intuitive puzzles are tantamount to rigging the game.

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You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!