The key ideas

The Puzzler: One Man's Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life

A. J. Jacobs, 2022

A cipher on CIA grounds that has resisted decoding for thirty years, a Siberian team at the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship, and a corn maze with emergency exits. A. J. Jacobs tried dozens of puzzles and came away with five techniques that also work in life. Here they are broken down into steps: replace anger with curiosity, divide a problem, turn it upside down, abandon your first guess when necessary, and find somewhere to start.

Who it is for

For anyone frustrated by problems that resist a solution who wants to approach them with curiosity rather than fear. And for anyone who loves crosswords, jigsaws, and riddles and suspects they have something to offer.

Small puzzles help us solve big ones.

A cipher that has resisted decoding for thirty years

On the grounds of CIA headquarters in Langley stands a metal sculpture called Kryptos. Rows of letters are cut into it, forming an encrypted message. When the sculpture was installed, intelligence staff thought the cipher would be cracked in about a week. By the time this book appeared, thirty-two years had passed and nobody had read the whole thing, including the people who walked past it on their way to work every day.

Journalist A. J. Jacobs secured permission to visit and see the sculpture for himself. That was just one of the adventures that make up his book. He competed with his family at the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship, wandered through the most difficult corn maze, worked through chess problems Garry Kasparov told him about, and wrestled with British crosswords where every word hides a trick.

Why would a grown man spend so much time on puzzles? Jacobs had loved them all his life and decided to test whether they were useful beyond the newspaper page. His conclusion: they were. In his view, puzzles teach us to think more clearly, invent things, persevere, and even understand other people better. Above all, small puzzles train the same techniques we use to solve big problems: at work, in families, and in arguments where people have stopped listening to each other.

Jacobs brings these techniques together under one name: the puzzler’s mindset. Ahead are five of his rules: how to replace anger with curiosity, cut a problem into pieces, turn it upside down, abandon your first guess when necessary, and choose which square to fill first. At the end, you will discover how a passion for answers can lead you astray. Let’s start with the simplest thing: what to call whatever is troubling you.

Don’t get mad, get curious

Music producer Quincy Jones once said that he had no problems in his life, only puzzles. Jacobs begins his first lesson with that thought. At first it sounds like wordplay. But say these two sentences to yourself: “I have a problem with my boss” and “I have a puzzle involving my boss.” The first feels like a rock around your neck; the second, like a task on your desk.

In Jacobs’s view, the difference goes beyond the word. A problem is frightening and seems impossible to solve, so you want to hide from it. A puzzle promises that an answer exists, and you want to find it. The task itself stays the same; what changes is the feeling with which you approach it.

Jacobs heard similar parenting advice from a child psychologist: don’t get mad, get curious. Imagine a child is late for school for the third time in a week. Anger demands punishment. Curiosity asks why this keeps happening and finds a cause, such as an alarm clock ringing in the next room.

Jacobs puts it plainly: anger gives you tunnel vision. You see only someone to blame and miss the way out. Curiosity widens the tunnel. He admits that he is curious about everything, even things he is not interested in.

He suggests the same approach to arguments with people who hold different views. The person on the other side becomes a puzzle rather than an enemy: what do they know that I don’t, and how did they reach a different conclusion? At the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship, Jacobs sat beside competitors from dozens of countries and felt that it was impossible to hate people you meet face to face. And when the world fell in love with Wordle, social media feeds briefly filled with strange yellow and green squares instead of arguments.

What can you do? When something infuriates you, rename it: a “puzzle” rather than a “problem.” Ask yourself “Why is this happening?” rather than “Who is to blame?” The first question opens a conversation; the second shuts it down.

Read in Livria

About the author

A. J. Jacobs is an American journalist and writer from New York who writes books based on experiments: for one, he read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica; for another, he spent a year living by the rules of the Bible.

All books by this author: A. J. Jacobs

Terms from the book

  • Clinton
  • Slack
  • Kahneman
  • Jones
  • Vermont
  • Carroll
  • Kasparov
  • Division of labor
  • Fermi
  • CIA: The Central Intelligence Agency, the United States foreign intelligence service.
  • Langley: A community in Virginia where CIA headquarters is located.
  • Kryptos: A metal sculpture by Jim Sanborn on the grounds of CIA headquarters, covered in encrypted text. Installed in 1990, its final section resisted decoding for decades.
  • Puzzler’s mindset: Jacobs’s expression, rather than a scientific term: the habit of approaching difficulties as puzzles, with curiosity rather than fear.
  • Wordle: An online game in which you have six attempts to guess a five-letter word, with colored squares providing clues. It became popular worldwide in early 2022.
  • Epstein: David Epstein, an American journalist and author of Range, a book about the benefits of breadth.
  • Assembly line: A belt or chain that carries parts from one workstation to another, allowing each worker to perform one operation.
  • Heinz: An American company best known for its ketchup.
  • Gauss: Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855), a German mathematician considered one of the greatest in history.
  • Mental flexibility: A willingness to change your approach and abandon a guess when the evidence does not support it.
  • Welch's: An American grape juice brand founded in the nineteenth century.
  • Wordplay: A 2006 documentary about crossword enthusiasts and the crossword editor of The New York Times.
  • Toehold: An image from the book: the easiest part of a problem, where you can begin and build the rest from there.
  • Sanborn: Jim Sanborn, the American sculptor who created Kryptos.
  • Apophenia: The tendency to see patterns and meaning in random coincidences.
  • QAnon: A conspiracy theory movement that emerged in the United States in 2017.
  • Baltimore Sun: A daily newspaper in Baltimore, in the United States.

All terms

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