Questions 20～24
The whole world is going, or has already gone, mad. I do not say this because of problems like the arms race, pollution or the population explosion. These are bad enough, but I think we now have a more serious problem: our desire to make ourselves miserable by sitting ourselves unnecessary problems, called puzzles. Dozens of magazines are published every month with names like The Puzzler, Enigmatic and Brain Teasers. They contain problems which you can do without, and solutions which do not make you feel any better.
The electronics industry is now cashing in on our strange need to set ourselves difficult tasks. Their computer games are even nastier, because the torture (the pain they cause) is not only mental but also physical. Only a superman could possibly keep up with the fast-moving dots which represent space invaders, or whatever they are supposed to be.
Where does it all start, and why do we do it? It starts when our well-meaning parents try to amuse, amaze and puzzle us with games like “I-Spy”. Later the whole thing becomes more sinister, when these puzzles (like “Odd Man Out” and the number series) are used as tests to see if we are clever enough or suitable for a particular course or job. And it ends on the bookstalls with those piles of puzzle magazines—usually with a pretty smiling girl on the front cover. (What is she smiling about? Why isn't she as miserable as the rest of us?)
We have plenty of real problems to worry us, and yet we create artificial problems to enable us to be miserable in our spare time as well. Why all this misery? The reason is actually very simple: because of a huge cosmic mistake, we have

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