Quotes & Sayings About Solving Puzzles

Consider a cow. A cow doesn't have the problem-solving skill of a chimpanzee, which has discovered how to get termites out of the ground by putting a stick into a hole. Evolution has developed the brain's ability to solve puzzles, and at the same time has produced in our brain a pleasure of solving problems. — Martin Gardner

A knotty puzzle may hold a scientist up for a century, when it may be that a colleague has the solution already and is not even aware of the puzzle that it might solve. — Isaac Asimov

For me, writing a novel is like solving a puzzle. But I don't intend my novels as puzzles. I intend them as invitations to dance. — Mohsin Hamid

Blessed are those who encounter a mystery in their lives because they obtain a big opportunity to live the great joy of solving puzzles! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Anyone getting starry-eyed about owning a bookstore should ask herself a few questions: Can you lift a box weighing fifty pounds? Do you know what cat pee on paper smells like and can you get it out? Will you exude patience while solving puzzles that start "I'm looking for a book..." and peter out somewhere between "it has 'The' in the title" and "It has a red cover and the author was a soldier whose last name started with S. Or was it Z? — Wendy Welch

One can defend common sense against the attacks of philosophers only by solving their puzzles, i.e., by curing them of the temptation to attack common sense ... — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Life is a series of puzzles; all you have to do is solve the puzzles. — Sam Owen

Mathematics began to seem too much like puzzle solving. Physics is puzzle solving, too, but of puzzles created by nature, not by the mind of man. — Maria Goeppert-Mayer

The most common anxiety I hear about learning to program is that people think it requires a lot of math. Actually, most programming doesn't require math beyond basic arithmetic. In fact, being good at programming isn't that different from being good at solving Sudoku puzzles. To solve a Sudoku puzzle, the numbers 1 through 9 must be filled in for each row, each column, and each 3x3 interior square of the full 9x9 board. You find a solution by applying deduction and logic from the starting numbers. For — Albert Sweigart

I have a really hard time connecting to music that doesn't feel like I'm somehow solving a puzzle that applies to my life. — Andrew McMahon

I was a keen observer and listener. I picked up on clues. I figured things out logically, and I enjoyed puzzles. I loved the clear, focused feeling that came when I concentrated on solving a problem and everything else faded out. — Sonia Sotomayor

The whole day of Bel Tine would be taken up with singing and dancing and feasting, with time out for footraces, and contests in almost everything. Prizes would be given not only in archery, but for the best with the sling, and the quarterstaff. There would be contests at solving riddles and puzzles, at the rope tug, and lifting and tossing weights, prizes for the best singer, the best dancer and the best fiddle player, for the quickest to shear a sheep, even the best at bowls, and at darts. — Robert Jordan

Actually solving the puzzles in the book isn't going to improve anyone's writing, but "trying to solve the puzzle" is one way to think about what a lot of us - writers and other artists - do every day. Step one is to recognize the problem, step two is deciding what constraints you want to impose or respect, and step three is finding a pleasing/surprising/exciting solution. — Peter Turchi

I love solving puzzles, I love finding my way around obstacles, and I love learning new things about technology. — Kevin Mitnick

Our whole life is solving puzzles. — Erno Rubik

By standard intelligence texts, the dogs have failed at the puzzle. I believe, by contrast that they have succeeded magnificently. They have applied a novel tool to the task. We are that tool. Dogs have learned this
and they see us as fine general-purpose tools, too: useful for protection, acquiring food, providing companionship. We solve the puzzles of closed doors and empty water dishes. In the folk psychology of dogs, we humans are brilliant enough to extract hopelessly tangled leashes from around trees; we can conjure up an endless bounty of foodstuffs and things to chew. How savvy we are in dogs' eyes! It's a clever strategy to turn to us after all. The question of the cognitive abilities of dogs is thereby transformed; dogs are terrific at using humans to solve problems, but not as good at solving problems when we're not around. — Alexandra Horowitz

If we have optimism without empathy then it doesn't matter how much we master the secrets of science. We're not really solving problems, we're just working on puzzles. — Bill Gates

If any student comes to me and says he wants to be useful to mankind and go into research to alleviate human suffering, I advise him to go into charity instead. Research wants real egotists who seek their own pleasure and satisfaction, but find it in solving the puzzles of nature. — Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

As a kid, I loved doing puzzles, solving riddles, and reading mystery books. I also loved animals and always had pets. — Bonnie Bassler

Not every puzzle is intended to be solved. Some are in place to test your limits. Others are, in fact, not puzzles at all ... — Vera Nazarian

Fun from games arises out of mastery. It arises out of comprehension. It is the act of solving puzzles that makes games fun. In other words, with games, learning is the drug. — Raph Koster

When you make weirdness into a puzzle to be solved, you make LOST — Joseph Fink

The questions we don't ask become the puzzles we don't solve. — A.J. Darkholme

But the other half of my motivation came from farther back in my brain, in the curious part that I inherited. It came from the spot in my skull that feels the burning need to unravel puzzles, finish crosswords, indulge in Internet games, and read all the mystery books I can get my grubby little paws on. Like it or not, need it or not, and want it or not, I can't leave a good mystery alone. — Cherie Priest

Collecting secrets was and is crucial to solving foreign policy puzzles. — Gregory F. Treverton

Later scientific theories are better than earlier ones for solving puzzles in the often quite different environments to which they are applied. That is not a relativist's position, and it displays the sense in which I am a convinced believer in scientific progress. — Thomas Kuhn

People love solving puzzles, and you always love it when somebody smarter than you is solving puzzles. — Rebecca Eaton

INTRODUCTION The Puzzling Puzzles of Harry Harlow and Edward Deci In the middle of the last century, two young scientists conducted experiments that should have changed the world - but did not. Harry F. Harlow was a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin who, in the 1940s, established one of the world's first laboratories for studying primate behavior. One day in 1949, Harlow and two colleagues gathered eight rhesus monkeys for a two-week experiment on learning. The researchers devised a simple mechanical puzzle like the one pictured on the next page. Solving it required three steps: pull out the vertical pin, undo the hook, and lift the hinged cover. Pretty easy for you and me, far more challenging for a thirteen-pound — Daniel H. Pink