It’s a more poetic way of saying you have got to embrace the journey. He said you have to embrace the arrow you have to love the search. The question mark is when you first see a puzzle, and you’re baffled the arrow is the struggle for solutions, the exploration and then the exclamation point is that aha moment. He summarized puzzles in three symbols: the question mark, the forward arrow, and the exclamation point. They’re like, ‘Why is it? What is it?’ There’s a great puzzler, Maki Kaji, who is called the godfather of Sudoku. My last book was about gratitude this book is all about curiosity. To me, part of what I love about puzzles is that they fuel my curiosity and I’d say curiosity and gratitude are my two favorite virtues. It all fits together.’ So that is another reason. We live in a world of greys and probabilities and puzzles present us with that Platonic ideal where you can say, ‘Okay, it all makes sense. But with puzzles, there is that one perfect solution. Each is suboptimal and you have to figure out which is the best of the imperfect solutions. There is no one simple answer there are a bunch of answers. Life’s problems are often very complicated. I also think that puzzles are a Platonic ideal of a problem. I get an actual dopamine rush from it, the same chemical that-they say-you get from cocaine and sex and all that. One is the search for the aha moment when you actually solve a puzzle. I’d say there are several things that are alluring about puzzles. Generally, based on yourself and your observation of others, what do you think attracts people to puzzles? Foreign Policy & International RelationsĪs well as being a puzzler yourself, you’ve now spent quite a bit of time with other people who spend a lot of time doing puzzles.

Books about puzzles or games pop sugar