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What kinds of puzzles are in the collection?
The examples below show the range of the roundup, not a complete inventory of all 23 challenges. They also give you a quick way to choose where to begin: pick the style of reasoning you enjoy, then see how far you get before checking a solution.
| Puzzle style | Representative challenge | What to bring |
|---|---|---|
| Deduction and game reasoning | Identify counterfeit coins with one weighing; reconstruct a flawless tic-tac-toe game; reason from Alicia and Bruno’s statements. | Careful tracking of what each clue rules in or out. |
| Spatial and combinatorial reasoning | Design calendar cubes, arrange matchsticks, or follow a mouse moving between adjacent cabinets. | A willingness to sketch possibilities and check constraints. |
| Probability and physical intuition | Work through Lewis Carroll’s marble problem or consider questions about cooling coffee and a rock dropped into a pond. | Clear assumptions and, for some problems, basic probability or physics intuition. |
| Language and number patterns | Try syllable and homophone challenges or a puzzle about spelling numbers in canonical form. | Attention to wording, sound and patterns. |
| Logic and information | Consider truth machines, poisoned-barrel identification, the 100-door toggling puzzle, or a way to compute average salary while keeping individual figures private. | Structured reasoning about rules, information and what can be inferred. |
| Geography and motion | Explore a spherical-Earth walking problem, questions about states and travel directions, or ants moving along a meter stick. | Visualizing movement and being precise about direction or distance. |
Do you need special knowledge to solve them?
Not usually, according to Murtagh: “These challenges are difficult, but they are nearly all solvable without specialized knowledge.” That qualification matters. The set includes different styles and some math or light physics familiarity can help, so a puzzle that feels opaque may simply be a poor match for your strengths—not proof that you missed an obvious trick.
How should you approach a difficult one?
- Read the exact wording twice. Separate the stated rules from assumptions you have added yourself.
- Represent the problem. Draw a diagram for movement or geometry, list cases for a deduction puzzle, or write out the allowed operations for a number or information problem.
- Test a small example. A miniature version can expose the pattern without committing you to a long calculation.
- Pause before opening the solution. The author’s advice is to resist checking the linked answer the moment you stall; more thought may uncover a route you had not considered.
- Check the reasoning, not just the final answer. A solution should explain why alternatives fail or why the proposed method satisfies every stated condition.
Where do the puzzles and solutions come from?
The set is from Jack Murtagh’s Gizmodo article published December 30, 2023, which collects 23 challenges from the 2023 Monday Puzzle series. Its linked puzzle pages provide the prompts and solutions. Some examples use visual diagrams, so rely on the original page when a picture is part of the puzzle rather than trying to reconstruct it from a short description.
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