Patience

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Puzzle games , also puzzles , are games , mostly for one person, in which a solution to a problem has to be found. The solution should be found through thought, perseverance and sometimes skill .

Vexiere are considered classic mechanical puzzles

history

Puzzle games are as old as the classic games. Well-known are the stories of the inventor of the chess game , who was allowed to wish something as a thank you from the Indian king and wished for the number of grains of rice that would result if you always put twice the number of grains on a square on the chess board as on the previous one. The Greeks also had puzzle games: the tangram-like placement game , the Stomachion , is said to have been invented by Archimedes. Puzzle games became widespread by the late 19th century when people had enough free time to do things that weren't necessary for a living.

Categories

Board games
In general, you can formulate tasks for all board games. Examples are chess . This category includes the usual mate-in- x- move problems. Another is the go . Problems can also be formulated with Go, often life-and-death problems
logic
This includes the story of a prisoner in a cell who has a choice of two doors to exit the cell. Death lurks behind one of the doors, and freedom behind the other. Two guards stand in front of the doors, one of whom always tells the truth and the other always tells the untruth. How can the prisoner find out with just one question, to which the answer must be yes or no , behind which door he can escape without knowing which of the guards is lying? Another example is the zebra puzzle .
Math problems
There is an almost infinite amount of math puzzles. These include, for example, encrypted arithmetic tasks in which the numbers have been replaced by other characters and have to be found out (HAHN + CHICKEN = EGGS) or construction tasks and, by the way, troubleshooting in apparently correct evidence with which obviously wrong things are proven,
25-15-10 = 15-9-6; Factoring out the common factors gives:
5 × (5-3-2) = 3 × (5-3-2); Dividing by the same brackets on both sides results in:
5 = 3; Note: Expressions in brackets in the second line = 0, so when shortening, division by zero is not permitted
Mechanical puzzles
This category includes all puzzle games that require handling of the game. Well-known representatives are the Rubik's Cube , Tangram and Vexiere .
Programming puzzles
Write a program that does certain things, a program that pretends to be itself. All data for the program must be contained in the source code itself.
Computer games
Since computers became widespread, a great number of puzzles in computer game form have been developed. Famous representatives of this category are Sokoban , The Incredible Machine , Boulder Dash or Pushover .
mystery
Problems in text form that usually require thinking outside the box. Sometimes such problems are brought into rhyme form: hole to hole and yet hold.
"Who was it"
Detective stories in which the reader has the opportunity to identify the perpetrator from the information contained in the story. The resolution usually occurs towards the end of the story
Puns
These include anagrams , in which letters from professions are converted to names of people, or to encode other things. Sometimes the task is to find the original (a gentleman = elegant man)
Solitaire
Matching and remodeling games with various objects; for example with cards or as a board game peg solitaire which is only called solitaire in German-speaking countries. Here, pieces have to be cleared from game boards by jumping over each other.
Puzzles
The assembly of images that have been broken down into several individual parts.
Mazes
Finding ways in a constantly branching and crossing jumble
Games of skill
Balls or other objects must be maneuvered into certain positions by tilting the container in which they are located.
Cryptograms
Secret messages are written in strange characters (see Sherlock Holmes  - 'The adventure of the dancing men')

This categorization does not claim to be complete. Of course, many games cannot be clearly classified. For example, logical problems are often mathematical of some kind. Who-was-it stories usually require general knowledge, but often also a little logic. However, it is uniform that luck only plays a relatively small role in finding the solution.

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Puzzle  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wikibooks: Section on puzzles from “Tips and Instructions for Creative Design”  - learning and teaching materials

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see task 8 of the Telepolis riddle ( Memento from January 12, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Mazes