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Sam Loyd: 9 puzzles worth knowing

9 puzzles from Sam Loyd, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• The sliding puzzle with a $1,000 prize that could never be won

  The 15 puzzle has fifteen numbered tiles sliding in a 4x4 frame. In 1880, puzzle-maker Sam Loyd offered $1,000 to anyone who could take a puzzle with tiles 14 and 15 swapped and sl…

  — Sam Loyd (popularizer); Noyes Chapman (inventor), The 15 Puzzle

• Turn the wheel and one of thirteen warriors disappears

  A card shows a circle of Chinese warriors printed around a rotating disc set into a rectangular background of the Earth. Rotate the disc slightly one way and you can count thirteen…

  — Sam Loyd, edited by Martin Gardner, Mathematical Puzzles of Sam Loyd

• Cut this card into three strips so both riders sit correctly on their mules

  Sam Loyd's 1858 puzzle card shows two mules with two riders, but the picture is cut into three strips that can be rearranged. Slide them into the wrong arrangement and the riders a…

  — Sam Loyd, Famous Trick Donkeys

• Sam Loyd's 'Back from the Klondike' maze

  In 1898 Sam Loyd published a maze built to defeat the classic trick of solving mazes backward from the exit. Starting on the heart at the center of a numbered grid, you move exactl…

  — Sam Loyd, Sam Loyd's Cyclopedia of Puzzles

• Connect nine dots in a square grid using only four straight lines

  Nine dots are arranged in three rows of three, like a tic-tac-toe grid with no lines drawn. Using one continuous stroke of exactly four straight lines, can you pass through every d…

  — Sam Loyd, Sam Loyd's Cyclopedia of Puzzles

• Sam Loyd's archery puzzle: hit exactly 100 points with six arrows

  In Sam Loyd's Cyclopedia of Puzzles, the winner of an archery contest scored exactly 100 points using six arrows, each landing in one of six rings worth 16, 17, 23, 24, 39, or 40 p…

  — Sam Loyd, Sam Loyd's Cyclopedia of 5,000 Puzzles, Tricks and Conundrums

• Cut this trotting pony into six pieces, rearrange them, and a different horse appears

  Sam Loyd's Pony Puzzle gives you a picture of a small pony sliced into six interlocking pieces. Rearranged one way, the pieces show the original pony. Rearranged another, the same …

  — Sam Loyd, The Pony Puzzle

• A Mile With the Wind, a Mile Against It — What's His True Pace?

  A cyclist rides a mile with a tailwind in exactly 3 minutes, then turns around and pedals the same mile straight into that same wind, taking exactly 4 minutes. Most people's first …

  — Sam Loyd, Sam Loyd's Cyclopedia of Puzzles

• Five Girls, Ten Weighings in Pairs — Find Each One's Weight

  Five schoolgirls step on a scale two at a time, in every possible pairing, giving ten different combined weights. None of them is ever weighed alone. From just those ten pair-total…

  — Sam Loyd, Sam Loyd's Cyclopedia of Puzzles

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