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Logic Puzzles

A logic puzzle is a puzzle based on mathematical problems from field of deduction. This branch of logical puzzles was introduced by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, better known under his pseudonym Lewis Carroll.

Charles popularized logical puzzles in his book ‘The Game of Symbolic Logic,’ He introduced a logical puzzle game to solve problems such as “some games are fun,” and “every puzzle is a game.”

Such puzzles are known as syllogisms in which you are given a list of premises and asked what can be deduced. Dodgson goes on to construct much more complex puzzles consisting of up to 8 premises.

Mathematician Raymond M. Smullyan in the second half of the 20th century continued and expanded the branch of logic puzzles with books such as The Lady or the Tiger?, To Mock a Mockingbird and Alice in Puzzle-Land. He popularized the "knights and knaves" puzzles that involve knights, who always tell the truth, and knaves, who always lie.

There are also completely non-verbal logic puzzles. Some popular forms include Sudoku, Unisol, Nonogram, and logic mazes.
Howard Garns, an American invented logic puzzle Sudoku in 1979. It was published by Dell Magazines under the name "Number Place". The puzzle became popular in Japan in 1986, when it was published by Nikoli and given the name Sudoku. Sudoku became an international hit in 2005.

The objective of Sudoku is to fill the 9x9 grid so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3x3 boxes contains the digits 1 to 9. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid so that there is only one solution.

Lawrence Gould invented the logical puzzle Unisol. Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, Australia) and Tele Sept Jeux (Paris, France) have been printing Unisol since the mid 1980s. In the Sydney Morning Herald it appears on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The puzzle is also available from key90.com in an ebook form under the name "Key 90".

Nonogram, also called "Paint by Numbers" are the picture logic puzzles that involve deduction to correctly fill in a grid with black-and-white squares to produce a picture.

Also known as 'mazes with rules,’ the Logic mazes are logic puzzles with all the aspects of a tour puzzle that fall outside of the scope of a typical maze. These mazes have special rules, sometimes including multiple states of the maze or navigator. Popular logic mazes include the rolling dice maze, tilt mazes etc.