ishu garg

Puzzle Labrotating feature / permanent archive

Puzzles that churn, chirp, or quietly expose your assumptions.

Inspired by clean old-school puzzle archives: simple statement, useful hint, honest solution, permanent URL. No confetti required.

Try trapdoor trivia Browse archive

puzzles / hints / reveal

Small problems that teach one clean trick and leave a permanent URL.

The puzzle lab should be quick to enter: statement first, hints next, solution last, then a technique shelf for similar puzzles.

Try current challenge Browse puzzle archive
Featured
  1. The Blindfolded Cards Puzzles / beginner / 5 min Evergreen
  2. The Parity Party Switches Puzzles / beginner / 7 min Active
  3. Prompt Injection Museum Guard Puzzles / intermediate / 8 min Active
  4. The Infinite Startup Payout Puzzles / intermediate / 10 min Evergreen
  5. Puzzle Technique Atlas Resources / beginner / living atlas Seed
logic

Invariant and parity tricks

Simple statements where one hidden quantity refuses to change.

Growth rule

Each puzzle needs one technique tag and a reveal that teaches the reusable move.

AI traps

Model failure puzzles

Tiny challenges for trust boundaries, prompt injection, citations, and tool use.

Growth rule

Toy-only challenges stay safe and link back to AI builder notes.

quant

Probability and expected value

Interview-style probability questions with simulation as a sanity check.

Growth rule

Quant puzzles separate educational practice from investment advice.

Build queue
  • Mini Sudoku constraint lab - interactive widget / interactive-later
  • Daily five-minute logic sprint - puzzle / next
  • Quant probability cards - challenge row / next

Current challenge

The Blindfolded Cards

You cannot see the cards. You still need to make two piles with equal face-up cards.

Open puzzle
  1. invariants Logic 2 challenges
  2. models AI Traps 2 challenges
  3. quant Probability 1 challenge
Challenge board

Mental muscles, not mystery meat.

The puzzle room should feel like a board: current challenge, lanes by technique, hints, solution, and permanent archive.

Open related archive
Structure

Puzzle Lab shelves.

What assumption gets exposed by this challenge?

logic

Invariants and parity

Small problems where the answer becomes obvious after the right conserved quantity appears.

Challenge Board 2 objects

Growth rule

Show statement first, then hints, then solution disclosure.

View all / difficulty/technique lanes

probability

Probability and quant reflexes

Expected value, conditioning, and interview-style thinking without mystique.

Challenge Board 1 object

Growth rule

Group by technique; keep finance claims source-reviewed and not advice.

View all / difficulty/technique lanes

AI traps

Model traps and prompts

Puzzles that teach LLM boundaries, tokenization, tool use, and prompt-injection thinking.

Challenge Board 2 objects

Growth rule

Keep the failure visible but harmless; link deeper AI writeups from the lab.

View all / difficulty/technique lanes

trivia

Almost obvious questions

Quick questions where the common answer is often the wrong one.

Challenge Board 6 objects

Growth rule

Use short questions, immediate explanation, and no account requirement.

View all / difficulty/technique lanes

route anchors

Other objects on this route

Compact anchors preserve old links without turning this page into a card wall.

More anchors
How this room grows
  1. site Whole site Keep the homepage as orientation and taste. Move depth to rooms and the archive.
  2. area Room / area Create a route when the audience, mental model, or review rules differ from siblings.
  3. subtopic Shelf inside a room Promote to its own page when it needs custom interaction, more than 20 objects, or a recurring newsletter/search path.
  4. collection Curated slice Use rows for many similar objects and cards only for heterogeneous featured objects.
  5. object Canonical content object Every public object keeps a detail URL and machine-readable summary, even if surfaced in many rooms.
  6. block Reusable block Blocks can appear in many posts. They never own taxonomy color or public identity by themselves.
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