Enigmatology

Puzzles and games have been around since the dawn of history. What are they? And what do they imply for the study of mind? These questions have rarely been studied to any depth, even though puzzles are found across cultures and across time. This book aims to address these questions in a systematic way, dealing with all kinds verbal and nonverbal puzzles and games in order to understand what they mean in psychological terms and what they have implied for human history. Puzzles may indeed provide a valuable key to understanding the human brain, for what are puzzles if not creative artifacts that are constructed with imaginative and strategies possessed by all humans? The field that aims to study puzzles scientifically is called enigmatology - a term coined by Will Shortz in 1974 as a student at Indiana University in Bloomington, who became a famous puzzle editor at The New York Times. Enigmatology is the “science of puzzles.” As far as can be determined, there is no comprehensive introduction or overview of enigmatology as a distinct discipline or field of inquiry. The purpose of this book is to fill in this gap.