Puzzles

Some puzzles, like crosswords, depend heavily on knowledge of the outside world. Others, like sudoku, are pure logic - you only need the rules and logic to solve them. Chess and Go are also puzzles in pure logic, but in practice you need a lot of knowledge to play well - the purely logical problem is way too tough for the human brain.

Mathematics seems to occupy a kind of intermediate state. It is structured as purely logical, but in practice links to sophisticated knowledge of the real world are everywhere, especially in the inspiration for its various subdisciplines.

Just sayin'.

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