● We all love a chance to show off how intelligent we are, whether it’s posting your IQ test
on Facebook, or tweeting that you’re, like, really smart.
But what if solving a puzzle could win you millions of dollars, solve a murder case or
unlock the mysteries of the past?
Are there some enigmas that are truly uncrackable?
Here are the unsolved puzzles of the world.
15 - The Phaistos Disc ● For over one hundred years, archaeologists
have been attempting to decipher a language written on a small piece of clay, over 4000
years old, found in the palace of Phaistos on the Mediterranean island of Crete.
The disk has two sides of hieroglyphic writing on both sides that follows a spiral pattern,
with symbols including pigeons, shields and a bull’s ass.
The most recent study claims it is a written prayer to a fertility goddess, but we may
never be sure.
14 - Kryptos ● In 1990, the CIA headquarters at Langley,
Virginia commissioned and installed a piece of artwork for their courtyard by artist Jim
Sanborn.
The metal sculpture matched the theme of secrecy and espionage, as it featured nearly 2000
letter of code, divided into four sections.
The first three have been deciphered, as a combination of map references and famous quotations,
but the last section, only 97 letters long, remains a mystery, despite the efforts of
the greatest cryptographers in America.
13 - Zodiac Letters ● Perhaps the most famous unsolved murder
case is that of San Francisco’s Zodiac Killer.
From 1968 to 1970, the police and media received a number of letters, detailing the crimes
committed, to tease and hint the identity of the killer.
Among the correspondence were four cryptograms, coded messages hidden in letters and symbols.
The first of these was decoded, but the other three, which may reveal the Zodiac’s name,
remain unsolved to this day.
12 - The Seven Bridges of Königsberg ● In the Medieval Prussian city of Konigsberg,
the local residents used to enjoy a Sunday walk around the island of Kneiphof.
The island was connected to the city by seven bridges, and so, for fun, people would try
to find a route which crossed every bridge only once.
No one managed to find it, until mathematician Leonard Euler determined that the puzzle was,
in fact, unsolvable.
Disappointing, sure, but in proving this, Euler laid the groundwork for modern mathematics
of graphs and networks.
11 - Eternity II ● English aristocrat and far-right politician
Lord Christopher Monkton is also known for creating and producing his own range of puzzles.
His second creation, Eternity II came out with an offer of two million pounds, around
four million dollars at the time, for the submission of a correct arrangement of matching
tile edges.
The competition has since expired, with no one claiming the prize, and Monkton keeping
the profits.
10 - Flight MH370 ● Shortly after midnight on March 8th 2014,
a Malaysian Airlines flight left Kuala Lumpur airport, headed for Beijing.
Radar contact at one a.m. showed the airplane on course over the South China Sea.
An hour later, scanners showed the flight heading the opposite direction, towards India.
This was the last sign of the plane anyone saw, and after numerous searches of the ocean,
there is still no clue on what has become one of the greatest aviation mysteries.
9 - The Fermi Paradox ● The universe is, like, quite big, so we’ve
been told.
Since Nikola Tesla suggested sending radio signals to Mars in the 19th Century, humans
have been searching the stars for signs of extraterrestrials but, to this day, we haven’t
found a trace of any alien culture.
This is actually surprising, given the sheer number of stars and it raises the unanswered
question of whether there might be some factor that prevents civilisations from advancing
beyond a certain point.
8 - Sudoko Mysteries ● Sudoku, that puzzle your grandma does
to stop herself from going senile, has been around for forty years, and in that time it
has fascinated math nerds with a lot of time on their hands.
We still have no idea about the number of possible puzzles with only one solution, and
we don’t even have a computer algorithm to generate the puzzles, everything until
now has been trial and error.
For something so simple, it is surprisingly hard to create formulae for.
7 - Shugborough Inscription ● Built sometime in the 18th Century, Shugborough
Hall is a stately home in the English midlands with beautiful gardens and a lake.
Hidden in the grounds is a monument with an ornate carving of three figures standing around
a tomb.
At the bottom is an inscription of ten letters, which has become one of the world’s great
unsolved puzzles, with some suggesting its solution may lead to the location of the Holy
Grail, and is connected to the secretive Knights Templar.
6 - The Theory of Everything ● Perhaps the greatest unsolved puzzle of
modern science is how to combine the two main theories of the universe.
The first is quantum theory, the study of the small, elementary particles that make
up all matter, and the second is general relativity, which looks at the relationship of time, energy
and gravity of massive objects.
Both theories are supported by their own mathematics, and yet strangely they cannot both be correct.
The unifying theory of everything would explain...well…
everything.
5 - Do Not Believe His Lies ● With nearly 300,000 downloads, a 2014
puzzle app has been confounding and confusing users for a long time now, with no one successfully
solving all the clues to date.
Created by a Polish game designer, and named after a line from the movie Memento, the game
involves solving a series of clues that reveal lines in a dark and mysterious storyline.
Players need to crack codes, find hidden messages or use smartphone features to find the answers.
4 - Rongorongo ● Easter Island is famous for the Moai,
the 900 statues that remain from the Pacific islanders that settled there over 600 years
ago.
But what fascinates some archaeologists even more are the 26 carved stone and wood tablets
that have been found on the island, showing a form of writing, that may be a totally independent
language.
Known as Rongorongo, the symbols show animals and plants native to the island, but the meaning
is still a complete mystery.
3 - Beale Ciphers ● A pamphlet published in 1885 in the state
of Virginia told the story of Thomas Beale, and eccentric prospector who hid a vast store
of gold somewhere in the state.
Beale encoded the location of his treasure into three ciphertexts, which he left with
a trusted friend, before disappearing forever.
The pamphlet published the cyphers, the second of which has been deciphered, using the Declaration
of Independence as a reference.
The other two are either the key to a fortune, or a hoax.
2 - Forres Fenn’s Treasure ● Art dealer Forres Fenn may have been inspired
by the Beale ciphers when he decided to hide an antique chest worth millions of dollars
somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.
Dying of cancer, Fenn hid the loot in 2010, and published a poem in his memoirs that hints
at the whereabouts of the prize.
Since then, at least three adventurers have died while searching, and local police are
begging the now recovered Fenn to end the hunt, which continues today.
1 - Tamam Shud ● On the morning of December 1st, 1948,
the body of a man was found on a beach near Adelaide, Australia.
In his pocket was a torn-out scrap of paper that read ‘Tamam Shud’, which is Persian
for ‘It is finished’.
After police released a photo of the scrap, a book was found, which was a translation
of a 1000 year old poem, and had the final page ripped out.
Inside the cover were five lines of code, which were never deciphered and the case still
remains unsolved.