Puzzles & curiosity
Algorithms, mathematics, and questions that reward a second look.
How Did They Measure The Moon?
How shadows, eclipses, and a half-degree angle helped people measure the Moon from Earth.
Godel's Incompleteness Theorems
Godel showed a precise kind of trouble: some true arithmetic statements can be stated inside a rulebook but not proved by that rulebook.
Computer Science As Art
Artists and curious people can find a different kind of beauty in algorithms, proofs, compilers, distributed systems, and type systems.
The Blindfolded Cards
A clean invariant puzzle: split cards while blindfolded so both piles have the same number of face-up cards.
Prompt Injection Museum Guard
A tiny LLM security challenge: separate trusted instructions from hostile page text.
The Infinite Startup Payout
A probability puzzle about expected value, real-world constraints, and why math without context lies politely.
Tokenizer Trap
A small LLM puzzle about why models can write beautifully and still stumble on character counting.
The Parity Party Switches
A small parity puzzle where the trick is noticing what can never change, even when everyone is busy flipping switches.