Jerry Slocum, puzzle master, visits Bloomington

Matthew Hayden. Jerry Slocum, and Professor Bret Rothstein discuss puzzles inside
the Slocum Room at the Lilly Library.
Image courtesy of Ellie Pursley

The April 8 total eclipse was intriguing enough for Jerry Slocum to travel from California. Tall and humble, the master puzzler brought his extended family and a film crew to view the eclipse and to visit the Slocum Room in the IU Libraries Lilly Library. In 2006, Slocum began donating his mechanical puzzle collection to the Lilly Library. He liked the Library’s unrestricted access policy, which was a requirement for him. What is a puzzle if one cannot touch and manipulate it? Currently, the Slocum Collection includes most of Jerry’s collection of 40,000 puzzles, 5,000 books, and manuscripts.  It has its own database, room, and curator,  Andrew Rhoda. The puzzles are used in math, art, education, and other classes and are featured in a weekly tour. 

I have always loved to solve puzzles.

When his father brought a puzzle home from the New York 1939 World’s Fair, Slocum fell in love. That first puzzle was called a Trylon-Perisphere, a “mechanical puzzle.”

“I have always loved to solve puzzles,” Slocum said. The year after the World’s Fair, his parents bought him a Japanese interlocking puzzle from San Francisco. On an allowance of 25 cents a month, Slocum began buying his own puzzles. About age ten, Slocum bought a “Rings’O’7,” a disentanglement puzzle. “The others were relatively easy, but this one,” Slocum described, “required mathematics.” He worked on it for three weeks before solving it. “I hungered for more.” 

As he got older, his interest grew. He purchased more and learned how to make them. He started trading with others who liked puzzles and writing about them as well. One essay took second place in a senior writing contest through the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Tau Beta Pi engineering honors society. It was published in the magazine Science and Mechanics in 1955. At the bottom of the article Slocum included an invitation to join in the joy of puzzles. He received five responses, one from Japan, one from Europe, and the rest from the United States. Along with two friends, Slocum started corresponding and sharing designs and puzzles with the five. Eventually, Slocum and his wife decided to invite everyone to their home. “We had a party in my living room. It was one day.” Everyone agreed they wanted to do it again. “It was the beginning of the IPP – the International Puzzle Party.”

Students learn the power of puzzles

In 1974, Will Shortz famously graduated from Indiana University’s Individualized Major Program (IMP) with the first degree in enigmatology, the academic study of puzzles. He is the puzzle editor of the New York Times and weekend puzzle master for National Public Radio (NPR). For the first time since Shortz graduated, there is another student pursuing a degree in Enigmatology, senior Matthew Hayden. His sponsor, Bret Rothstein, Ruth N. Halls professor of art history, uses the Slocum Collection for teaching and his own research. Rothstein credits the Collection with transforming his life. 

Rothstein designed a College of Arts & Sciences Undergraduate Research Experience (ASURE) course, The Power of Puzzles: Matter and Meaning, Thinking and Doing. Currently, he requires students to use puzzles in the Slocum Collection to examine the relationship between sight, touch, hearing, and speech. He expects students to struggle with the puzzles for weeks. “A little difficulty never hurt anyone,” Dr. Rothstein said when meeting with Slocum and Hayden during the eclipse visit. 

The beautiful, elegant kind of frustration

The three puzzle enthusiasts discussed their first puzzles, puzzles they favor, and the International Puzzle Party, which Slocum initiated in 1978. Both Rothstein and Slocum encouraged Hayden to come to one in the future. This one coming up will coincide with Slocum’s 93rd birthday.

“It’s a living collection,” Rothstein said. When looking for a permanent place for his collection, Slocum wanted people to interact with the puzzles. It was important that they were not behind glass, simply to be looked at. Rothstein explained seeing the Collection for the first time: “It was like coming home, and I never knew I had left.” 

 The course Rothstein teaches uses puzzles to model the research process. Rothstein wants his students to experience the puzzle before they discuss it. He wants them to be passionate about the object. He hopes his students will learn to be with the puzzle instead of hurriedly thinking it through. Solving puzzles is “the beautiful, elegant kind” of frustration.

Slocum and his world-wide puzzler friends feel the same way: puzzles are to be experienced, not problems to solve.