In Our Right Mind

Our brains have been getting smarter in response to modern life, but a surprising new study suggests the trend may have peaked. So how can you maximise your thinking?

- Kate Evans

Can you solve this problem? You have a wolf, a goat and a cabbage, and you need to get all three across a river in one piece. You have a boat, but it’s so small that it can fit only you and one of the items, and you can’t leave the wolf and the goat or the goat and the cabbage alone together. How do you get them all across?

This classic logic puzzle is at least a thousand years old. It is attributed to Alcuin of York, a medieval poet and scholar who died in 804, though it probably circulated in oral form before then. There’s another version with a fox, a goose and a bag of beans, and a related tale about three lascivious (but jealous) husbands and their wives who must also be ferried across a river without any hanky-panky on the boat or the shore.

Similar riddles are found across Africa, too. There is a traditional Liberian variation involving a cheetah, a fowl and some rice, though two can be carried on the boat; and a Zambian one with four objects – a leopard, a goat, a rat and a basket of corn – that also must be taken across the river.

According to one historian, these different logical structures suggest the brainteaser arose spontaneously in each of the cultures – implying that mathematical thinking and the enjoyment of puzzles is a universal trait (and, perhaps, that getting a collection of unwieldy things across a body of water has been a common problem in history).

From campfire riddles and murder mysteries to cryptic crosswords and Sudoku, the human brain loves to tangle with a puzzle – a rehearsal, perhaps, for the serious and real problems we must confront in our jobs and personal relationships and as a society.