The Original "Thinking Outside the Box" Puzzle!
Let me first introduce myself and this blog, which is titled Total Brain Workout. I am a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, and one of my main areas of cultural research is...
View ArticleFun with Anagrams
Anagrams are words or phrases made by rearranging the letters of other words or phrases. Their origin goes right back to the dawn of recorded history. Initially, they were perceived as harboring secret...
View ArticleCan you solve these visual thinking puzzles?
Visual thinking is the term used commonly in psychology to refer to the type of thinking that results from perceiving or processing visual stimuli, forms, or patterns. Such thinking is a major function...
View ArticlePuzzles and the Brain
I recently googled relevant psychology, neuroscience, aging, and education websites to get a sense of the kind of research being conducted on the relation between puzzles, and general brain...
View ArticleThe Appeal of Sudoku
In the winter of 2005, I was in my office early in the morning preparing my classes ahead of me when I got an unexpected call from a reporter at the Associated Press who, having read my book The Puzzle...
View ArticleThe Doublet Puzzle: A Masterpiece from the Pen of Lewis Carroll
Most people probably know Lewis Carroll, the nom de plume of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, as the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.read more
View ArticleWhere is the Missing Dollar?
I have often been asked what makes a puzzle interesting. Is it difficulty level or complexity? I don't think so, although difficulty and complexity do make a puzzle more challenging. The classic...
View ArticlePuzzles and Brain Fitness: A Personal View
The intent of this blog is (and has always been) to correlate brain fitness with puzzles. I was asked recently, if doing puzzles helps stave off Alzheimer's and other forms of mental deterioration. I...
View ArticleAlcuin’s River Crossing Puzzles and Common Sense
As a puzzlist, I often emphasize that many puzzles are solved simply by using common sense or what the American pragmatist philosopher Charles S, Peirce (1839-1914) called "practical logic." When we...
View ArticleCryptograms and the Allure of Secret Codes
We seem to have an instinctive fascination for mysteries and, especially, for mysteries that revolve around secret codes. This penchant brought about a publishing sensation in 2003-Dan Brown's novel...
View ArticleWord Squares
One of the oldest puzzle genres of history is what we now call the word square or acrostic, a square grid of seemingly random letters which, however, actually conceals words or messages.read more
View ArticlePuzzle-Solving and the Power of Generalization
One of the most interesting features of the human brain is its ability to extract general principles from specific cases. read more
View ArticleWord Ladders Meet Anagrams
In a previous post, I dealt with word ladders, the puzzle genre invented by Lewis Carroll. As you might recall, you are given two words, with steps in between, as in a ladder. read more
View ArticleThe Marvels of the Rebus
The rebus is one of the most fascinating puzzles of all time.read more
View ArticleA Word Puzzle That Will Get You Thinking Quick
Increase your knowledge of word construction by doing word Lego puzzlesread more
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