1. Solution of the cubic & quartic algebraic equations were "puzzles" circa 1500. 2. Logical problems were parlor games circa 1900. These became the basis of Russell's & Goedel's work. 3. Permutation puzzles in the late 1800's -- Polya's/Burnside's theory of counting, etc. 4. Ropes & knots -- "knot theory" Maxwell, Tait, etc. http://www.southalabama.edu/mathstat/personal_pages/silver/scottish.pdf 5. Weaving & looms -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom -- led to Babbage & the Census Bureau & to IBM punch cards. 6. Tiles & tiling & especially Penrose-type tilings. 7. Betting games & problems with infinite variance. Huge amounts of work required to pin down the nature of probability density functions, etc. 8. Mobius strips, Klein bottles, etc., and advances in physics. 9. All sorts of puzzle-like things have been found to lead to undecidability or to "NP-completeness". E.g., "knapsack"-type puzzles. 10. Various games that can be solved with "information theory" -- minimum number of weighings, etc. 11. "Rock, paper, scissors" & non-transitive voting preferences. 12. All kinds of mechanical linkages circa 1900. 13. Number theory was the basis of puzzles circa 2000BCE: http://www.amazon.com/Number-History-Classics-Science-Mathematics/dp/0486656... 14. Visual puzzles / optical delusions, etc. Insight into how the brain works, how robot vision should work, etc. At 11:11 PM 9/22/2007, Scott Kim wrote:
I'm writing an article for an upcoming special issue of Discover magazine (in Dec) devoted to puzzles. The article will be about puzzles that led to new developments in math or science. For example, solving the Bridges of Könisburg led Euler to the development of topology. I prefer examples where the puzzle statement and the solution are accessible to a lay audience, and want to include some examples that have very recent implications...for instance even though Könisburg is an old problem, there might be a recent application of Euler circuits that are newsworthy now. Anyone have any thoughts? -- Scott Kim