Puzzle in the context of "Rubik's Magic"

Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the form of Interactive narratives or Interactive narrations. These works can also be understood as a form of video game, either in the form of an adventure game or role-playing game. In common usage, the term refers to text adventures, a type of adventure game where the entire interface can be "text-only", however, graphical text adventure games, where the text is accompanied by graphics (still images, animations or video) still fall under the text adventure category if the main way to interact with the game is by typing text. Some users of the term distinguish between interactive fiction, known as "Puzzle-free", that focuses on narrative, and "text adventures" that focus on puzzles.

Due to their text-only nature, they sidestepped the problem of writing for widely divergent graphics architectures. This feature meant that interactive fiction games were easily ported across all the popular platforms at the time, including CP/M (not known for gaming or strong graphics capabilities). The number of interactive fiction works is increasing steadily as new ones are produced by an online community, using freely available development systems .

A rebus (/ˈriːbəs/ REE-bəss) is a puzzle device that combines the use of illustrated pictures with individual letters to depict words or phrases. For example: the word "been" might be depicted by a rebus showing an illustrated bumblebee next to a plus sign (+) and the letter "n".

It was a favourite form of heraldic expression used in the Middle Ages to denote surnames. For example, in its basic form, three salmon (fish) are used to denote the surname "Salmon". A more sophisticated example was the rebus of Bishop Walter Lyhart (d. 1472) of Norwich, consisting of a stag (or hart) lying down in a conventional representation of water. The composition alludes to the name, profession or personal characteristics of the bearer, and speaks to the beholder Non verbis, sed rebus, which Latin expression signifies "not by words but by things" (res, rei (f), a thing, object, matter; rebus being ablative plural).

In planning and policy, a wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. It refers to an idea or problem that cannot be fixed, where there is no single solution to the problem; "wicked" does not indicate evil, but rather resistance to resolution. Another definition is "a problem whose social complexity means that it has no determinable stopping point". Because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems. Due to their complexity, wicked problems are often characterized by organized irresponsibility.

The phrase was originally used in social planning. Its modern sense was introduced in 1967 by C. West Churchman in a guest editorial he wrote in the journal Management Science. He explains that "The adjective 'wicked' is supposed to describe the mischievous and even evil quality of these problems, where proposed 'solutions' often turn out to be worse than the symptoms". In the editorial, he credits Horst Rittel with first describing wicked problems, though it may have been Churchman who coined the term. Churchman discussed the moral responsibility of operations research "to inform the manager in what respect our 'solutions' have failed to tame his wicked problems." Rittel and Melvin M. Webber formally described the concept of wicked problems in a 1973 treatise, contrasting "wicked" problems with relatively "tame", solvable problems in mathematics, chess, or puzzle solving.

A combination puzzle, also known as a sequential move puzzle, is a puzzle which consists of a set of pieces which can be manipulated into different combinations by a group of operations. Many such puzzles are mechanical puzzles of polyhedral shape, consisting of multiple layers of pieces along each axis which can rotate independently of each other. Collectively known as twisty puzzles, the archetype of this kind of puzzle is the Rubik's Cube. Each rotating side is usually marked with different colours, intended to be scrambled, then solved by a sequence of moves that sort the facets by colour. Generally, combination puzzles also include mathematically defined examples that have not been, or are impossible to, physically construct.

Suspense is a state of anxiety or excitement caused by mysteriousness, uncertainty, doubt, or undecidedness. In a narrative work, suspense is the audience's excited anticipation about the plot or conflict (which may be heightened by a violent moment, stressful scene, puzzle, mystery, etc.), particularly as it affects a character for whom the audience feels sympathy. However, suspense is not exclusive to narratives.

The Riddler (Edward Nigma, later Edward Nygma or Edward Nashton) is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by Bill Finger and Dick Sprang, and debuted in Detective Comics #140 in October 1948. He has become one of the most enduring enemies of the superhero Batman and belongs to the collective of adversaries that make up his rogues gallery.

In his comic book appearances, the Riddler is depicted as a criminal mastermind in Gotham City. He has an obsessive compulsion to incorporate riddles, puzzles, and death traps in his schemes to prove his intellectual superiority over Batman and the police. His real name—Edward Nigma—is a pun itself; an "enigma" is a person or thing that is difficult to understand. With this self-conscious use of an elaborate gimmick, the Riddler's crimes are often theatrical and ostentatious. The character commonly wears a domino mask and either a green unitard decorated with question mark prints or a green suit and bowler hat. A black, green, or purple question mark serves as his visual motif. He commonly says "Riddle me this", before stating his iconic riddles.

A riddle is a statement, question, or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and conundra, which are questions relying for their effects on punning in either the question or the answer.

Archer Taylor says that "we can probably say that riddling is a universal art" and cites riddles from hundreds of different cultures including Finnish, Hungarian, American Indian, Chinese, Russian, Dutch, and Filipino sources amongst many others. Many riddles and riddle-themes are internationally widespread.

A polyomino is a plane geometric figure, connected, formed by joining a finite number of unit squares edge-to-edge. It is a polyform whose cells are squares. It may be regarded as a finite and connected subset of the regular square tiling.

Polyominoes have been used in popular puzzles since at least 1907, and the enumeration of pentominoes is dated to antiquity. Many results with the pieces made of 1 to 6 squares were first published in Fairy Chess Review between the years 1937 and 1957, under the name of "dissection problems." The name polyomino was invented by Solomon W. Golomb in 1953, and it was popularized by Martin Gardner in a November 1960 "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American.

Sudoku (/suːˈdoʊkuː, -ˈdɒk-, sə-/; Japanese: 数独, romanized: sūdoku, lit. 'digit-single'; originally called Number Place) is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. In classic Sudoku, the objective is to fill a 9 × 9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3 × 3 subgrids that compose the grid (also called "boxes", "blocks", or "regions") contains all of the digits from 1 to 9. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid, which, for a well-posed puzzle, has a single solution.

French newspapers featured similar puzzles in the 19th century, and the modern form of the puzzle first appeared in 1979 puzzle books by Dell Magazines under the name Number Place. However, the puzzle type only began to gain widespread popularity in 1986 when it was published by the Japanese puzzle company Nikoli under the name Sudoku, meaning "single number". In newspapers outside of Japan, it first appeared in The Conway Daily Sun (New Hampshire) in September 2004, and then The Times (London) in November 2004, both of which were thanks to the efforts of the Hong Kong judge Wayne Gould, who devised a computer program to rapidly produce unique puzzles.

A tour puzzle is a puzzle in which the player travels around a board (usually but not necessarily two-dimensional) using a token which represents a character. Maze puzzles are often of this type.

Sometimes the player has more than one token with which to travel. Sometimes certain objects have to be found or retrieved on the way. In the case of large hedge mazes, the player makes the trip themselves instead of a token.

Mathematical puzzles make up an integral part of recreational mathematics. They have specific rules, but they do not usually involve competition between two or more players. Instead, to solve such a puzzle, the solver must find a solution that satisfies the given conditions. Mathematical puzzles require mathematics to solve them. Logic puzzles are a common type of mathematical puzzle.

Conway's Game of Life and fractals, as two examples, may also be considered mathematical puzzles even though the solver interacts with them only at the beginning by providing a set of initial conditions. After these conditions are set, the rules of the puzzle determine all subsequent changes and moves. Many of the puzzles are well known because they were discussed by Martin Gardner in his "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American. Mathematical puzzles are sometimes used to motivate students in teaching elementary school math problem solving techniques. Creative thinking – or "thinking outside the box" – often helps to find the solution.

A mechanical puzzle is a puzzle presented as a set of mechanically interlinked pieces in which the solution is to manipulate the whole object or parts of it. While puzzles of this type have been in use by humanity as early as the 3rd century BC, one of the most well-known mechanical puzzles of modern day is the Rubik's Cube, invented by the Hungarian architect Ernő Rubik in 1974. The puzzles are typically designed for a single player, where the goal is for the player to discover the principle of the object, rather than accidentally coming up with the right solution through trial and error. With this in mind, they are often used as an intelligence test or in problem solving training.

King Features Syndicate, Inc. is an American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles, and games to nearly 5,000 newspapers worldwide. King Features Syndicate also produces intellectual properties, develops new content and franchises (like The Cuphead Show!, which it produced with Netflix), and licenses its classic characters and properties.

King Features Syndicate is a unit of Hearst Holdings, Inc., which combines the Hearst Corporation's cable-network partnerships, television programming, distribution activities, and syndication companies. King Features' affiliate syndicates are North America Syndicate and Cowles Syndicate.

Puzzle video games make up a broad genre of video games that emphasize puzzle solving. The types of puzzles can test problem-solving skills, including logic, pattern recognition, sequence solving, spatial recognition, and word completion. Many puzzle games involve a real-time element and require quick thinking, such as Tetris (1985) and Lemmings (1991).