Quotes About Puzzles

Sometimes he and his father would work out puzzles together. Once they came upon a particularly difficult problem that turned out to be insoluble. That was acceptable, his father told him: you can always try to solve a problem by proving that no solution exists. Lorenz liked that, as he always liked the purity of mathematics

Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition," Kuhn wrote.

Puzzles forced me to look at something from several angles before I moved on, to look again, and again, and possibly again because each piece—no matter how small or seemingly insignificant—was critical to the whole.

But the other half of my motivation came from farther back in my brain, in the curious part that I inherited. It came from the spot in my skull that feels the burning need to unravel puzzles, finish crosswords, indulge in Internet games, and read all the mystery books I can get my grubby little paws on. Like it or not, need it or not, and want it or not, I can't leave a good mystery alone.

The way sadness works is one of the strangest riddles of the world.

Quagmires, remember?

The braggadocio aspect is important: a successful but modest man is ordinarily not called a k'nocker. A k'nocker is someone who works crossword puzzles—with a pen (especially if someone is watching).

We receive an e-mail from a mother who describes how her son, at age two, learned all the state capitals as an afternoon diversion and later solved three-digit arithmetic problems when he was bored in his stroller.

When I was a kid, what captivated me about detective fiction were the puzzles more than the detectives or their enemies. And as I've gotten older, I see a lot of merit in setting your investigative sights higher than figuring out how someone stole Encyclopedia Brown's bicycle.

My being a writer and playing Scrabble are connected. If I have a good writing day, I'll take a break and play online Scrabble. My favorite word as a child was 'carrion,' before I knew what it meant. I later created crossword puzzles, which was a lot about puns, and how words would create these strange, strange things.

Describe us as a sex, was her challenge. Sphinxes without secrets.

The monkeys solved the puzzle simply because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it. The joy of the task was its own reward.

To this day the existence of odd perfect numbers remains unsolved.

We could spend the rest of our lives trying to randomly guess his keyword. And worse, I'm fairly certain he's using multiple keywords, maybe even more than one on every page. I wouldn't say it's crack-proof, but I believe it may be beyond my own personal abilities.

His bedroom was a reflection of Bryant's mind, its untidy shelves filled with games and puzzles stacked in ancient boxes, statues and mementoes competing for space with books on every subject imaginable, from Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology to Illustrated British Ballads and A History of Indian Philosophy. "What are you reading at the moment?' asked May. "Batman," said Bryant. "The drawings are terribly good.

Whatever the medium, there is the difficulty, challenge, fascination and often productive clumsiness of learning a new method: the wonderful puzzles and problems of translating with new materials.

Philosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

John Edgar Park introduced me to the gentle art of recreational lock-picking. It's fun and potentially useful to know how to tickle tumblers in the right way to open door locks and padlocks.

I remember having this vague idea that what mathematicians did was that some authority, someone, gave them problems to solve, and they just sort of solved them.

These are the real puzzles that will face humanity. There is, he claims, a single theory that will explain not only why the queue you choose at a supermarket is always the slowest but why trains always leave on time when you are late and leave late when you are on time." "There isn't an answer to those," murmured Madeleine doubtfully. "It just happens." "That's what they used to say about lightning," replied Pandora, "and rainbows.

Ninjas are far more important to science than anyone realises. If we could capture one to study, I think most of science's biggest puzzles might be resolved.

Some consider the puzzles that are created by their omissions as spicy challenges, without which their texts would be boring; others shun clarity lest their work is considered trivial.

Trenton Lee Stewart

We've finally gotten rid of the other children, Reynard.