About

About the name: I'm actually a big fan of owls, but that's not the only reason that I called the site PuzzleOwl. There's some quality of wisdom that we often attribute to owls. To be clear I'm not claiming to be wise myself, not at all, but there is some kind of undeniable connection between puzzles and wisdom. If we think about it, a puzzle certainly requires us to engage our minds and use our wit. Not just that, but the pursuit itself is to figure out the mysterious little secret that it holds. This pursuit is a solitary one, a strictly personal satisfaction of gaining a deeper understanding. This leads me to believe that solving puzzles is actually a pursuit of a kind of wisdom.

My personal history with puzzles goes back quite a bit. As a child I had the traumatic experience of being given a Rubik's cube to play with. I say "traumatic" because although I was enraptured and couldn't put it down, I couldn't figure out how to solve it either and was frustrated to the absolute limit. Thankfully, I soon found a different puzzle, an easier one that I did figure out how to solve. I don't remember what it was called but it sparked an affinity for puzzles that's stayed with me to this day.

Meanwhile, the Rubik's cube sat on the shelf as a painful reminder. I think this experience certainly influenced my criteria for recommending puzzles, namely that a puzzle should offer an appropriately hard challenge for the puzzler. Truly difficult puzzles like the Rubik's cube are amazing, but a person needs to be ready for the magnitude of the challenge or they'll end up either giving up in frustration or just looking up the solution. Both of these are unsatisfactory conclusions, which might actually lead to a distaste for puzzles in general.

Regardless if you're a beginner or an expert, one of the things that I appreciate most about puzzles is this: when it comes to puzzles the only people we're in competition with is ourselves. If you face a challenge and overcome it, that's an achievement — regardless of what anyone else is doing.

But just because solving puzzles is a solo activity, doesn't mean that you can't share and interact with other people about them. That's something I learned recently, when I got inspired to gift and share my favorite puzzles with the people close to me. I witnessed their surprise and delight in solving the puzzles or heard from some of them about it later. It reminded me of my first time solving that puzzle, and it was incredibly rewarding to have a small hand in bringing about that kind of experience for people. Eventually, this feeling is what led to me creating this site.

So that's what this site is about, turning all that solitary experience with puzzles outwards, back into the world. To start, I'm extending the idea of sharing my favorite puzzles with friends by providing puzzle recommendations to people. And in general, this site is for me to share whatever knowledge and experience I have regarding puzzles that could help people.

So despite not being very wise, I hope to share whatever wisdom I do have, so you may find wisdom of your own.