Before you accuse me of clickbait, hear me out. If you scroll the same corners of social media that I do, then you’re sick of seeing meme puzzle accounts abuse the caption “Only 1% of people can solve!” over some lightweight teasers. Are we really supposed to believe that only 1 in 100 people can count the triangles…
This Thursday is Pi Day, the one day of the year devoted to a mathematical constant (it also happens to be Einstein’s birthday). We all learned as kids about how special pi is and have since accepted its cultural status as a geeky totem and a number worth celebrating. But perhaps we should revisit pi through the jaded…
In 2023, I posed 23 challenges as part of the Gizmodo Monday Puzzle series. Some require a bit of math, and others a light familiarity with physics; but most can be solved through logic and creative thinking. For each of the following puzzles, I provide a link to the solution, but I suggest you resist the temptation…
Here’s a mind-blowing geography fact: The northernmost part of Brazil is closer to Canada than it is to the southernmost part of Brazil. Facts like this partly speak to truly unusual geographical features of Earth (like Brazil’s massive land area) but also to how warped our perception can be of our own home. We’ve…
Games are a bottomless reservoir of puzzle inspiration. This is because games and puzzles both tend to be founded on a concise set of logical rules. This week’s puzzle concerns one of the simplest strategy games ever devised: tic-tac-toe. Don’t feel too assured, though. You may be a tic-tac-toe expert, but have you…
Welcome to the first Gizmodo Monday Puzzle, a new series in which I will pose thought-provoking challenges at the beginning of every week to jumpstart your brain. I am a lifelong puzzle lover, sometime puzzle creator, and new Gizmodo puzzle writer. Many of the teasers posted here will be difficult—but they will be…
