Puzzle contest facts for kids
Puzzle contests are popular competitions in which the objective is to solve a puzzle within a given time limit, and to obtain the best possible score among all players.
Modern era
The current era of puzzle contests, in which the contests are conducted almost entirely by mail, began in the early 1970s. A promoter of packaged vacation tours called American Holiday Association (AHA) decided to use a puzzle contest to publicize its holiday packages. The puzzle contest proved so popular, that eventually AHA dropped its vacation business and became exclusively a puzzle contest promoter.
The best-known of the AHA contests was their BINGO format word grid. In the first round the player had to fill in 5 words into the 5x5 grid, meshing with the word BINGO that had already been filled into the left column. Since there were only 2 words in the word list starting with B, only 2 words with I, etc., no real skill was required. The second round was similar, with BINGO filled in the diagonal. Again, there were only 2 words starting with B, only 2 words with I in the second position, and so forth.
At their peak, around 1985-90, the AHA contests drew about 100,000 players in each contest, with a new contest starting every week.
The Diamond Dilemma was a 160-piece 3d triangular tiling puzzle with a £250,000 prize for a full solution. The prize went unclaimed by the 1990 deadline, though prizes for easier subproblems were awarded.
The Eternity puzzle (1999) and Eternity II puzzle (2007) were a 209-piece tiling and a 256-piece edge-matching puzzle developed by Christopher Monckton, for which a £1 million and $2 million prize could be won. The first competition was won by a pair of mathematicians, the second went unsolved.
