y solution was wrong, of course.  Same as everybody else's during the seven decades that have followed.  But that day I was shown how to solve it, and something wonderful lighted up my six-year-old cranium. The moment marked the beginning of a penchant for solving puzzles -- and later on, for creating puzzles, thereby offering others the pleasure of finding solutions. 

Within fifty years, the Internet asserted its primacy.  What better venue will there ever be for sharing puzzles with the world!  A search on the web for "puzzles online" produces hits by the tens of millions.  Heck, you will find more than a hundred entries listed in the table of contents at Puzzles with a Purpose.  By the way, one of those puzzles has a grown-up title, Counter-Intuitive Cork.  Here are some observations about that on-line collection...
 

The idea of the puzzle is to invite passive readers to become active solvers.  By convention, the published solution is necessarily kept separated from the puzzle. Solvers must wait for the next publication cycle or suffer some other form of inconvenience, like looking up the denouement on a different page or upside down in fine print.  On the web, the solution is one click away.  Suspense is thus self regulated. 

-publication opens up a galaxy of new conventions. The power of transclusion by hypertext deserves highest consideration.  Optional links augment the content of both puzzle and solution.  Gaps in a solver's knowledge get filled in instantly for the occasion at hand -- and beyond.  Acquiring new knowledge cannot be avoided, as this singular tool-of-the-web exploits and satisfies the solver's curiosities (plural).

Paperless delivery makes conservation of space meaningless.  Indeed, hyphen-
ation of words at the end of a line makes no sense and impairs reading.  Same for right justification and small font size.  Sidebars and footnotes can apply many graphical options.  Puzzles especially benefit from all the features of on-line publication. 

Something seems to be missing on that list.  Isn't it about time for a new genre?   Meanwhile...

ver a decade, Puzzles with a Purpose evolved from simple (Band Around the Earth) and terse (Genesis Won One) to complex (Next Superbowl) and verbose (Sloping in the Dark).  Puzzles and their solutions, unfettered by the conservation of paper, are free to express any amount of literary content, in the form of both essays and narratives.  Whereas each puzzle necessarily stands alone alongside its solution, some puzzles became linked to others.  Thus, a half-dozen themes have emerged.  They are listed here with representative examples...
 

A few puzzles may have made original contributions in science (To Billow or Not to Billow), technology (Single Tracking), and mathematics (Circloid).  Inasmuch as the solver's powers of observation are called into play, a puzzle and its solution might even result in original insights into a baffling mystery.  Permit me to illustrate...

he puzzle Which way, Amelia? was created with an ambitious objective: To solve the greatest mystery in aviation history: the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan during their 1937 flight around the world.  Theories and speculations and myths appear on a million websites pertaining to this fascinating story.  An on-line bibliography lists more than a hundred published works claiming to solve the mystery.  Given all that, what might one puzzle hope to accomplish? 

Not enough, apparently. The Amelianna Collection actually took ten puzzles. 

As puzzles are expected to do, those entries identify unknowns and solve for them.  Acting together, they address the most critical issues in Amelianna. Then too, there are unknowables in  the historical record and popular narratives.  That means solvers must make assumptions. 

Whether that collection of puzzles accomplished the objective of solving the Amelia Earhart mystery with finality -- well, such a judgment is not within the scope of the present essay. 

There are three dozen links among the individual puzzles, binding them together to form a coherent whole, transcending disparate topics. The Amelianna Collection totals 20,000 words and includes 40 illustrations.  More than a hundred text passages were brought  in from worldwide resources. With its transclusions, that would amount to a ten-chapter book -- if the set were ever printed out on paper.

Some of those entries came about by inadvertence as much as by design. The development was dynamic.  Over a period of months, individual entries arose almost spontaneously, each standing alone. As originally published, several puzzles and their solutions were marked "work-in-process."  Comments and criticisms received from solvers near and far influenced the contents.  New puzzles were added and brought into confluence with the others. 

hether these particular aggregations will wind up in a book-like manuscript remains to be seen, but -- hey, length is irrelevant.  Indeed, a stand-alone puzzle qualifies for the new literary genre, especially one enriched with hypertext-intensive features. 

Care to share your thoughts?

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• matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.

-- adapted from "problematical" in 101 Words I Don't Use

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l’Énigme Comme un Genre Littéraire

 

n 2012 l'auteur a pris sa retraite à Jugon-les-Lacs, une ville en France et a  commencé à apprendre une belle langue.  Il a écrit son premier 'puzzle' en français avec le titre Nombre Magique.  Mais, le mot 'puzzle' a le sens d’un jeu composé de morceaux que l'on doit assembler pour faire un dessin.  C'est à dire en anglais: 'jigsaw puzzle'. 

Cette description n’est pas appropriée pour cette collection avec le titre Puzzles with a Purpose en anglais parce que le but (purpose) est éducatif dans beaucoup de sujets pas limités à un jeu d'assemblage d'une image.

Une référence propose le mot 'énigme' avec le sens figuré "toute chose difficile à comprendre, à expliquer, à connaître."   Il semble que 'énigme' est proche du sens que cherche l'auteur.  En conséquence, 'énigme' va être utilisée pour les entrées futures en français.