Riddles and Puzzles
Posted by Rob Herman at October 19th, 2006
I have been calling the logic problems posted here “riddles.” In an offline discussion, reader MJB asked me why this was so. To him, the best examples of riddles were those posed by the Sphinx to Oedipus or those exchanged by Bilbo and Gollum; exercises in unraveling metaphor. He suggested that “puzzles” more accurately reflects the nature of these problems, which are based in logic.
I defended my choice, because the choice of “riddle” over “puzzle” was something I actually did think about, although it was really an intuitive judgment; nothing I thought about so deliberately as I did in this discussion. To my mind, the best examples of puzzles are exercises like Sudoku, crosswords, cryptograms, jigsaws, or any of the various puzzles you find in Dell newsprint magazines. These are a lot of fun and satisfying to work out, but they seem fundamentally different and the thrill of victory is not quite as strong. That’s why I went with “riddle,” because the problems I relate seem so different than these puzzles. Certainly no publisher could print a whole magazine full of the kind of riddles I enjoy every month!
Thinking about it some more, the difference seemed to be that puzzles come in similar kinds, and their solutions follow a common pattern. There are only so many techniques that are used for, say, a Sudoku or a cryptogram. Finding when to use these techniques and choosing the right one comes with experience, but the similarities are clear. But, MJB asked, aren’t some of the truth/liar style riddles like that?
I believe they are not. The easiest riddles of this form, the most classic ones, involve casting a question that a liar and truth-teller will give an acceptable answer to. About the strongest common thread is that you need to establish exactly what you will and won’t be able to know at the end of the riddle. For instance, you might ask 3 yes/no questions without ever having the luxury to know what the words for “yes” and “no” are!
Furthermore, coming up with a problem of a similar form is hard. Try it! It’s as hard as coming up with a satisfying metaphorical riddle, one that leaves you thinking “I should have known that!” rather than “how the heck was I supposed to know that?” at the end. By contrast, coming up with a puzzle is easy. Want a cryptogram? Take a quote, add the substitution cipher your computer gives you, and BOOM. Sudoku? Take a grid of number and subtract some of them. Jigsaw puzzle? Take a photograph, print it on cardboard, and cut it up.
But it was the crossword puzzle that really drove home the distinction for me. Creating a crossword is not a mechanical process. Creating the grid of words takes time and effort; then you need to come up with clues. But just like the other puzzles, you start with the answer and go from there. And that, I think, is the distinction between riddles and puzzles. In a puzzle, the answer comes first. In a riddle, the question comes first—the really hard part of making a riddle is finding an interesting question. I think MJB accepted this reasoning, and I’m actually quite proud of that.
(And if it’s not clear, the kind of riddles I enjoy are the “logic” riddles, as opposed to what might be called “metaphor” riddles.)
Do you have any other thoughts as to what makes a puzzle different than a riddle? If so, please share. I have some ordinary articles planned, but I’m sure further riddles will feature before too much longer.
For the most part I agree with this article. One thing I don’t quite agree with is how sudoku was catergorized with the jigsaw puzzle and the like. I don’t necessarily disagree with them being catergorized together. When working on a medium level Sudoku I do kind of feel like I am putting together a jigsaw puzzle and most of the Sudoku I’ve seen are rather easy to “brute force” which definitly sets them apart from the “question craft” style logic puzzles. What disagree with is that the answer comes first when making a sudoku. Just like with riddles the task is not simply to make “a” sudoku but rather to make “a good” sudoku. A good sudoku has the following qualities: one and only one solution, and is significantly difficult that simply looking at it for a few minutes will not provide the solution. I have tried to craft such a “puzzle” before and it is suprising difficult. Using your method of “Take a grid of number[s] and subtract some of them.” is problematic. Take away to many numbers in the wrong position and there is no longer a unique solution. Leave to many in in other position and the puzzle becomes to easy. A better way to craft it I feel is to start with an empty grid and fill in numbers until there exists only one possible solution. In this way the puzzle is designed question first not answer first.
I was, perhaps, being a little too flippant with my description of how to create a Sudoku puzzle. It helps to have a computer around that can tell you how many solutions remain to the puzzle. If you accidentally run out, you back up one or two steps and try deleting a different number. Or you can just have the computer generaet the whole thing.