Defining Puzzles

Of course "Puzzle" can be a verb or a noun, with the verb often being the action intended my the object which is the noun.  Puzzling thought I think.

I also think the value of a puzzle in not in the passage of time it takes to solve it, but rather the critical thinking it takes to solve it.  In the case of a 3 dimensional puzzle, it exactly the challenge that as a young child honed the skills and desires I had to become an architect.  I think I owe my career as an architect to the first cube kumiki puzzle given to me by my parents.  As architecture is often thought to be the blend of art and science,  I think puzzles, especially the 3D wooden puzzles I collect, are the blend of Art and Mathematics.  And of the thousands of types of puzzles that exist, I find myself gravitating always to the beautiful, sustainable, precision wooden burrs, that to me are "Architecture in my Hand".

Jerry Slocum and Jack Boterman, 1986

The first person to truly understand puzzles was Professor Hoffman, in his book Puzzles Old and New published in London in 1893 where he first tackled the classification.  Jerry Slocum and Jack Boterman later focused specifically on Mechanical puzzles in 1986 with the publication of Puzzles Old and New.  Their book established one of the the primary classification systems that is still in place today.

Most of the puzzles that I have always collected fall under either put-together aka assembly; take-apart aka disassembly;  or Interlocking Puzzles.   Burr Puzzles can almost always be considered as interlocking.  The current Wikipedia site at the time of this post has a simple description at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_puzzle .  An interlocking puzzle is described as one or more pieces holding the rest together, or the pieces are mutually self-sustaining. They range from two pieces to hundreds of pieces and can be simple to almost impossible.  

While the classification of puzzles is not necessary to enjoy them, the mathematical minds that create them will always seek order from chaos.  For a  deeper dive into classification there are other sites that have interpreted it to greater levels of precision:

Wood Puzzles by Karin & Jürg von Känel, which has a reprint of Jerry Slocum's 11 division classification - http://www.woodpuzzles.com/puzzles_class_slocum.html 

The Puzzle Museum by James Dalgety, which shows his 14 division classification with Edward Hordern in 1999, including a graphical summary - http://puzzlemuseum.com/class/class01.htm

And lastly, the most detailed is Rob Stegmann's Puzzle Page that tries to make sense of it all and aligns all the major classifications since Hoffman's book into one huge matrix - http://home.comcast.net/~stegmann/classif2.htm