Puzzling Pop Culture
This 2022 word-based puzzle had millions of players guessing a five-letter word within six tries each day.
What is "Wordle"?
Which Greek warrior is referenced when talking about a single point of vulnerability, or someone’s “heel”?
Who is "Achilles"?
Often considered the world’s best-selling puzzle, this 3D combination challenge invented in 1974 requires twisting rows and columns of colored squares.
What is the Rubik’s Cube?
This seven-letter palindrome is another term for a speedy motor vehicle
What is "racecar"
Juneteenth, a federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S., falls on this day of June.
What is "19"?
In this horror film franchise, a villain orchestrates life-and-death “games” that force victims to solve twisted traps.
What is "Saw"?
This Greek mythological figure is doomed to roll a boulder uphill for eternity, symbolizing endless or futile effort.
Who is "Sisyphus"?
This popular two-player guessing game involves pegs on a grid where you “call the shots” on your opponent’s hidden pegs.
What is "Battleship"?
This five-letter adjective refers to matters relating to a city government or community affairs.
What is "civic"?
In 1969, NASA’s prime-numbered Apollo mission was the first to land humans on the Moon.
What is Apollo "11"?
This 2006 film starring Nicolas Cage follows a puzzle-laden treasure hunt through America's founding history.
What is "National Treasure"?
Which Greek mythological character is being referenced when saying someone is “carrying the weight of the world”?
Who is "Atlas"?
These geometric puzzles, originating in China, use seven flat shapes to form countless figures and patterns.
What are tangrams?
This five-letter palindrome can describe a balanced or even state.
What is “level”?
In calculus, this method approximates the integral of a function by dividing the area into rectangles or other similar shapes.
What is the "Riemann Sum"?
This 2003 Dan Brown novel (and 2006 Ron Howard movie) brims with cryptic clues hidden in the works of art of a famous Italian polymath.
What is "The Da Vinci Code"?
Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” makes references to which 1992 hip-hop classic song?
What is “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-A-Lot?
Also called “paint-by-numbers,” these puzzles require shading squares in a grid to reveal a hidden picture.
What are "nonograms"?
This seven-letter palindrome describes a mechanism or muscle that facilitates turning, like part of your shoulder joint.
What is “rotator”?
The euro was introduced as a trading and accounting currency for select EU nations in this prime year.
What is "1999"?
This 2019 thriller film depicts a group of strangers trapped in puzzle-themed rooms where every solution could mean life or death.
What is "Escape Room"?
Created by Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd, this shape is also known as the “impossible triangle.”
What is the Penrose Triangle?
This cryptographic substitution cipher swaps letters for symbols derived from a grid, creating a rune-like alphabet of boxes, angles, and dots.
What is the "pigpen cipher"?
A seven-letter palindrome meaning “one who transforms an abstract idea into something real.”
What is "reifier"?
This is the ancient Greek mathematician largely considered the "father of geometry", whose namesake theorem proves that there are an infinite number of prime numbers.
Who is "Euclid"?