The Puzzle Instinct: The Meaning of Puzzles in Human Life

2 Puzzling Language

As the oldest puzzle known, the Riddle of the Sphinx (chapter 1) is a perfect example of how puzzles tell a fascinating story about human affairs. The inability to solve the riddle had, as we saw, dire consequences for would-be heroes. While the repercussions of not being able to solve riddles today are not as catastrophic, it is nonetheless true that failure to do so leaves a strange, discomforting feeling within us and makes us feel less than heroic. Children in particular are instinctively drawn to riddles, clearly enjoying both the challenge they pose and the mischievous language with which they have been constructed. The ancients certainly took riddles seriously, as many early legends attest. The mythical figures of yore earned their heroic status not only through their physical prowess, but also (if not more) through their ability to solve or invent challenging riddles. The biblical story of Samson is a case in point. At his wedding feast, Samson wanted to impress the relatives of his wife-to-be by posing the following riddle to his Philistine guests (Judges 14:14): Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. 2 PuzzlingLanguage R, A,  O V P “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.” . . . If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle. —Judges (14:14, 18) He gave the Philistines seven days to come up with the answer, convinced that they would be intellectually incapable of doing so. The clever Samson had devised his riddle as a description of something he had once witnessed—a swarm of bees making honey in the carcass of a lion. The Philistines, however, took advantage of the time given to them to threaten Samson’s wife, eventually coercing the answer from her. When they gave Samson the correct answer after seven days, the mighty hero of Hebrew legend was stunned. Enraged, he declared war against the Philistines. The ensuing conflict, during which his Philistine mistress Delilah betrayed him, led eventually to his own destruction. And all this over a simple riddle! Puzzles based on language structure abound throughout cultures and across time, and they are intrinsically intertwined with the myths, legends, and traditions of all ancient societies. Anagrams (words or phrases made by rearranging the letters of given words), for instance, were widely perceived to offer secret messages from the deities that purportedly had the power to predict or affect someone’s destiny. It was only after the Renaissance that the widespread view of certain words as magical anagrams started to fade, as Western society began reinterpreting the symbols of the past in new scientific ways. But the feeling that words possess magical qualities was not erased from the human imagination. This feeling can still be seen on children’s faces each time they learn a new word or hear a riddle. The realm of word puzzles is the first stop on our journey through Puzzleland. This is the territory inhabited by Humpty Dumpty—a Carrollian character who is Alice’s ironic commentator on the many puzzling features that are built right into the very structure of language, humanity’s greatest intellectual achievement. Riddles Those who were incapable of solving the Riddle of the Sphinx paid for their ineptitude with their lives. Samson’s life ended in calamity over a riddle. To the list of casualties, one can add the ancient Greek poet Homer, whose death was said to have been precipitated by the distress he felt at his failure to solve the following riddle posed to him by a group of fishermen: What we caught, we threw away.What we could not catch, we kept. (answer: fleas) 38 ThePuzzleInstinct For many centuries, riddles were often regarded as coded messages from divine sources, designed to test the intellect and sapience of human beings equipped with special knowledge. This is why, in ancient Greece, priests and priestesses called oracles frequently expressed their messages in the form of riddles. They were thought to be extraordinary individuals who had special powers to speak on behalf of the gods and to reveal their will. The use of the word “riddle” in everyday discourse—the “riddle of life,” the “riddle of the universe,” the “riddle of language,” etc.—reverberates with oracular overtones to this very day. If we could figure out such riddles...