This is a list of puzzles which have been proven impossible. An impossible puzzle is a puzzle that cannot be solved by following the directions or criteria for that puzzle.
- Mutilated chessboard problem
- Some variations of Fifteen puzzle
- Three-colouring the edges of the Petersen graph
- Seven Bridges of Königsberg
- Water, gas, and electricity
- Three cups problem
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, impossible and/or puzzles:
“The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935)
“The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935)
“It is impossible to think of Howard Hughes without seeing the apparently bottomless gulf between what we say we want and what we do want, between what we officially admire and secretly desire, between, in the largest sense, the people we marry and the people we love. In a nation which increasingly appears to prize social virtues, Howard Hughes remains not merely antisocial but grandly, brilliantly, surpassingly, asocial. He is the last private man, the dream we no longer admit.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)
“Woman and fool are two hard things to hit,
For true no-meaning puzzles more than wit.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)