Anthropology of Puzzles

Marcel Danesi is Professor of Semiotics and Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada. He has published extensively and is editor-in-chief of Semiotica, leading journal in the field of semiotics. He is author of The Semiotics of Emoji (Bloomsbury, 2016).

• List of FiguresPrefaceAcknowledgements1. Puzzles in Mind and History2. Riddles3. Word Games4. Visual Puzzles 5. Puzzles in Mathematics6. Puzzles and Logic7. Puzzles and Human IntelligenceReferencesIndex

"Puzzles—inclusive of riddles, games, optical illusions, enigmas, oracles, labyrinths—appeal to the individual human mind and to collective cultural traditions, from prehistory up to today, and around the globe. The motivation to ""play"" may lie in the reward: the ""ah-ha"" for pastimes and/or the ""gotcha"" when intellectual challenge is involved. Semiotics' own ""magister ludi"" Marcel Danesi has collected, curated, and clarified the addiction experienced by those lured onto the dialectical thin ice between logical reasoning and sheer imagination. - Myrdene Anderson, Purdue University, USAMarcel Danesi, the world’s leading authority on puzzles, provides an insightful historical overview of the creative, psychological, and interactional role of puzzles in cultures worldwide. These cultural artifacts date from the dawn of history, and Professor Danesi illustrates clearly and convincingly how solving puzzles stimulates the imagination and the inventiveness of the individuals and the societies that produce them. These enigmatic forms constitute the brain’s tools for resolving problems and they are an essential component of human intellectual endeavors. - Frank Nuessel, University of Louisville, USAHow are puzzles solved before their algorithm is found? Non-algorithmically – using creativity of semiotic logic. This is what Marcel Danesi, a leading scholar of the Toronto Semiotic Circle, is demonstrating. - Kalevi Kull, University of Tartu, EstoniaAn intriguing and fascinating overview of puzzles throughout human history. The book unravels the mysterious underlying origins of mind and culture through puzzles, with many mind-twisting puzzle examples. - Kumiko Tanaka-Ishii, University of Tokyo, Japan"