3QQ's: Adam Wagner on Puzzles

New York Times crossword puzzle creator Adam Wagner talks brain teasers.

Welcome to Three Quora Questions, our series of interviews in which a guest expert joins me to field strange and interesting questions posed on Quora.com (the internet’s oddest knowledge repository).

For the first edition, I’m joined by jack-of-many-trades Adam Wagner. Adam has been a writer for Jimmy Kimmel and the creator of award-winning ad campaigns, but most recently he’s focused his creative energy on puzzles. In addition to writing twenty (and counting!) crosswords for the New York Times, Adam invented the Wordle-style daily games Anigrams and Order Up. I highly recommend you check them out for all your brain-teasing needs — and if you have a good time, support Adam on Patreon!

And now for today’s REAL puzzlers… three questions I’ve selected for Adam that were posed by random people on Quora.

---

What is your favorite math problem/puzzle?

ADAM: When I say I'm a nerd, most people assume I'm talking about enjoying things like Lord of the Rings or D&D. But no. When I say I'm a nerd, I mean I choose to spend my free time doing math recreationally. Apologies if I've just scared away all of your readers forever. (Editor’s note: this might have been a bad idea.)

For those of you who are still here, you're in for a treat. Because this is my favorite puzzle ever: How can you divide an L shape perfectly in half, into two sections of equal area, using only a pencil and a straight edge (not a ruler)? 

Your strategy has to be able to work for *any* L shape -- it could be equally tall and wide, or it could be totally cockamamie-looking. But you need a single strategy that works for *all* of these.

L shapes, helpfully provided by Adam.

What I love about this puzzle is that it seems really simple. But then you try to solve it and it starts to seem really complicated. But then you figure out the solution and you realize it actually is really simple after all. Fair warning: I have entire notebooks completely filled with L scribbles from when I first tried to solve this. It legitimately looks like something out of The Shining.

But once you figure it out, it's soooo satisfying.

Do jigsaw puzzles help your brain?

ADAM: Do jigsaw puzzles help *my* brain personally? Honestly... no. Not really.

But that's just because I don't really do them! I generally opt for puzzles of the word/math/logic variety. Things like crosswords and Connections (Editor’s plug: And Anigrams and Order Up!) that have a bit of personality to them.

Or to put it differently: I like puzzles that have someone behind them to blame when they stump me.

But do jigsaw puzzles help your brain in the *general* sense? Absolutely. Not only are they a great way to stay sharp with all the color and shape associations, but they're also a fantastic icebreaker/relationship builder. I remember making friends in college purely because they were doing a puzzle and I walked over and helped put a piece in, and that sparked a conversation that became a friendship. That's what puzzles do at their very best -- they bring people together!

Would you rather be a puzzle missing a piece or a piece missing a puzzle? Why?

Anyone who chooses “puzzle missing a piece” as the answer to this question is completely unhinged and should not be trusted. Even just the thought of a puzzle that is missing a single piece feels like mental nails on a chalkboard. It's the visual manifestation of what a migraine feels like. I hate that you even made me consider this. (Editor’s note: lol)

To be a piece without a puzzle, though, is to have a purpose! To find where you fit! Your community, your passion, your reason for getting out of bed each day! We should all be so lucky as to be a piece without a puzzle, striving, searching, yearning! In fact, thank you, Quora, for giving me a new lifelong metaphor for what it means to be alive!

Can you tell I drank my coffee right before answering this question! I'm a piece without a puzzle!

---

Thanks for the answers, Adam! And now I bid you the traditional puzzlers’ farewell: May the wind blow you ever t’ward the Sudoku you seek.

(Now that Adam’s gone, how long did it take you to solve that stupid L-puzzle? Let me know in the comments!)