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)
“My list of things I never pictured myself saying when I pictured myself as a parent has grown over the years.”
—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)
“I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing—for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it’s impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them.”
—Charles Lamb (1775–1834)