puzzle history

1 min read 2021-11-12 00:06:28

The Founding Fathers of Cryptography?

It’s Veterans Day, and on an occasion dedicated to giving thanks to all those who served the United States honorably during either war or

1 min read 2021-08-24 23:01:21

When you get right down to it, the puzzle world isn’t all that big. There are a few names that everyone knows, and plenty of names that people

3 min read 2021-03-25 22:59:53

We’ve talked quite a bit about the importance of Enigma machines in the past. The quest to crack the unbreakable Nazi code machine spanned the

2 min read 2021-03-12 23:59:58

One of the most curious – and tumultuous – friendships in history was that of Frederick the Great and Voltaire. Voltaire, the 18th-century

4 min read 2021-02-24 00:05:09

Puzzles in various forms have been with us for thousands of years. We can look back at examples like riddles from ancient Greece and Sumeria, the

6 min read 2021-01-01 00:00:49

It’s the final blog post of the year, so what do you say we revisit all of 2020 with a countdown of my ten favorite blog posts from the past

4 min read 2020-09-08 23:03:34

[Image courtesy of PNG Find.] I have always suspected that riddles were our first experiments with puzzles and puzzly thinking. Long before

2 min read 2020-07-21 23:01:07

One of the biggest news stories of the last few years in the world of puzzles and games has been Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek’s ongoing battle

3 min read 2020-06-02 22:58:26

The more you look, the more you can find puzzles in all sorts of interesting places. We find them in literature, in historical documents, and in

3 min read 2020-03-03 23:51:35

During World War II, the Enigma code was one of the most daunting weapons in the German arsenal. Cracking the code would be the key to intercepting

3 min read 2020-02-29 00:00:46

We talk about codes a lot in this blog. We’ve discussed codebreaking, hidden messages, encryption, spycraft, and password protection in the past.

4 min read 2019-12-28 00:05:00

[Image courtesy of Kiplinger.] 2019 is rapidly coming to a close, and as I look back on another eventful year in the world of puzzles and games,

3 min read 2019-11-12 23:57:05

[Image courtesy of Medium.] One of the coolest things about the Internet is how it facilitates the gathering of information. Not only does it

3 min read 2019-10-10 22:57:04

[Archimedes, looking disappointed for some reason. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.] Imagine the first puzzle. The very first one. What form would it

5 min read 2019-10-03 22:58:00

e There’s nothing quite like a treasure hunt to spark the imagination. From The Treasure of the Sierra Madre to the adventures of Indiana Jones,