What is a Puzzle?
Often definition is:” A puzzle is a problem or enigma that challenges ingenuity.” In a basic type of puzzle you piece together objects in a logical way in order to come up with some shape, picture or solution.
Puzzle games never seem to age, specially today with computer, WWW and online games. Most puzzle games are basic in graphics but are very addictive, sometimes leaving you playing for hours.
There are many types of puzzles. Some of them are very popular, and some are not. Puzzles that have been created until now can be divided into several main categories.
Jigsaw puzzles are a well known and popular type of puzzle. A jigsaw puzzle is a puzzle that requires the assembly of numerous small pieces, and each piece has a small part of a picture on it. When all pieces are complete, a jigsaw puzzle produces a complete picture. There are two dimensional, three dimensional (Puzz-3D is the brand name of three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles), and recently online Jigsaw puzzles have appeared.
Word puzzles like Crosswords and Anagrams are the most popular type. A crossword is a word puzzle that takes the form of a square or rectangular grid of black and white squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words by solving some type of question or clues which lead to the answers. The black squares are used to separate the words or phrases. An Anagram is a type of word play puzzle, and by rearranging the letters of a word or phrase, you produce a new word or phrase by using all the original letters only once.
Logic puzzles include many different types of puzzles. Logic puzzles are math-based, like the well known and popular puzzle, Sudoku. Besides Sudoku, other logic-based number placement puzzles include Nonograms (or Pixel Puzzles), Kakuro, Impossible Puzzle, and The Tower of Hanoi.
Combination puzzles are a variety of mechanical puzzles that consist of a number of pieces which can be manipulated into different combinations by a group of operations. The most famous of these puzzles are the original Rubik’s Cube, and the Tangram puzzle, where the objective is to form a specific shape with all seven pieces.
Tiling puzzles are puzzles which involve two-dimensional packing problems where a number of flat shapes have to be assembled into a larger shape without overlaps. In some tiling puzzles you must first dissect a given shape, and then rearrange the pieces into another shape, or dissect a given shape while fulfilling certain conditions. Types of tiling puzzles include Conway puzzle, Domino tiling, and Puzz-3D.
Construction puzzles are solved by assembling any puzzle from a given set of pieces in a certain way. This main category includes any of the stick puzzles, many tiling puzzles, and also some mechanical puzzles. In online games puzzles representative of this type are Bridge Builder, The Incredible Machine, and Pipe Dream.
Transport puzzles are puzzles in which the player pushes boxes around and tries to achieve the aim of the game. The most popular representative for this type of puzzle is the Sokoban puzzle. Other examples of this type of puzzle are cube puzzles and sliding puzzles.
Picture puzzles are popular with children, and include Connect-the-Dots and Spot the Difference where two versions of an image are shown side by side, and you must spot the difference.
Sliding puzzles are solved by sliding blocks without lifting any of the pieces of off the board. Most people are familiar with N-puzzle (or. Fifteen puzzle), where you slide flat pieces along a board to establish a certain end-configuration.
Tour puzzles are puzzles where players make a trip around some type of game board. The most popular tour puzzles are Knight’s Tour, Mazes (or labyrinths), Mizmazes and Logic mazes.
Mechanical puzzles include the Rubik’s Cube, disassembly puzzles, interlocking puzzles, and impossible objects (like Ship in a Bottle).