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Sarawak State Library

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An Anthropology of Puzzles

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Call no.
: 793.73/DAN
Author
: Marcel Danesi
Contributor
: Safwan Hanif Bin Osman
Summary
Puzzles have been a part of recreational culture since the earliest of civilizations. Historically, puzzles had become a form of “miniature revelations” of truth as the uncovering the solution relate to human intelligence. Riddles, typically disseminated orally throughout the culture, began to incorporate metaphors as clues to the solutions. Word games, such as anagrams, acrostics, and cryptograms, exist using the potential of ludic nature of language. Optical illusion is a well-known type of visual puzzle that plays on people’s perception just like vanishing tricks, tangrams, and mazes. Other than being cognitive exercises, puzzles have historically involved mathematical equations as its’ solutions. Logically-inclined puzzles exists in forms of paradoxes where logic is imaginatively deconstructed. Human and their curiosity fuelled the creation of ever-increasing complex puzzles that teases chance and intelligence to stimulate their minds.