A puzzle has a solution and wants to be solved. A mystery has a solution but doesn’t want to be solved. An Enigma doesn’t have a solution and doesn’t want to be solved.

As children we love a puzzle. Be that a wooden one with slide-together pieces or one of the puzzle books with fun stories and fiendish conundrums inside. The result of completing a puzzle is the satisfying ‘click’ of logic, the ringing chime of a solution as the elements come together to create the whole picture and reveal an answer. Because fundamentally this is what we want, the bell-like ring of an Answer. Like Pavlov’s Dog the ringing bell is what we crave, not the nourishment. Puzzles are designed this way. The answer is in mind when the puzzle is created, and you want people to arrive at the solution as if finding it naturally but there will always be the guiding hand. The shapes on the edges of the pieces, the clues that are connected by a gossamer thread of reason. The design of the puzzle implies reason, leading to an end that is ultimately curated. Like a magic trick that you are privy to the working of, there is an excitement to the conclusion of a puzzle as you glimpse the thread as it catches the light and you tumble towards its end. In the end, it is a game, a blueprint of another’s mind. A Puzzle is a mode of empathy.

A mystery is a puzzle born out of nature. Be that the elements of life or the nature of a person. There is weight to a mystery. A mystery does not seek to entice, there is no deliberate design to unravel, but entice us it does. There is nothing quite so intriguing as a real mystery because a mystery has stakes, consequences. Their solution bears with it, not just the satisfying conclusion of order, but the more material rewards of acclaim. Solving a mystery means gifting the knowledge as one package to another, the joy of seeing comprehension on their face knowing they now appreciate YOUR mind. The mystery is not created so you know someone else’s mind or the workings of nature, the mystery is only to be solved so others may discern yours. A mystery is inanimate without a person to imbue it with the need for a solution. It is absent any need to be solved. We assign it that need so it becomes about OUR logic and offers a map of our mind. A murder is a mystery only in that we demand a culprit. A Lion murdering a Gazelle is not a mystery, nor is it a puzzle, as we understand the rationale. Because we don’t understand a murder in real life or a story until it is solved, and when it is, the map of a murderer’s mind is not what we find satisfying, it is the discoverer’s mind we uncover. We marvel at the detective never the culprit. We disappear into a mystery. It has its own world, its own logic, its own gravity. Instead of us reaching outside of us for a solution, it takes us inside. The solution teaches as much about our self as it does the mystery. A mystery, then, is a mirror.

An enigma is an emptiness. The gaping blackness of an indistinct beyond. It is breaking through the base layer of ourselves and finding the thing beyond impossible to comprehend. Even whatever created the enigma is unknown. Key to all this is that a puzzle and mystery entice, yet an enigma is repulsive. Like the gulf of acceptance that widens the closer to life a puppet gets, the more uncanny the mystery the more it becomes an enigma. Were we to find the answer to an enigma it would not satisfy because that would require us to apply a logic to it, to make it human. It is understandable then we try to replace enigmas with mysteries, substituting a lack of design with its presence to make it easier to accept. Enigmas represent the vastness of the night sky, the hollowness of the cave. It is the gasp of air, never a sigh. If the mystery is a broken puzzle then the enigma is a broken mystery. If the mystery is a mirror, a glimpse at our self, the enigma is everything outside of us. The Hegelian Other. The Lacanian Real. An enigma, then, is Death.

We tell stories about these three things. An adequate story offers a puzzle. A good story gives us a mystery. The best stories give us enigmas. The story of a puzzle helps us slide its sentences and paragraphs into an order that gives us that defining ring of a definite truth. It reassures but offers nothing more. It reveals its design in its writing and the solution becomes clear long before the end approaches, and the answers it offers are already known to us. A poor story reaffirms, it cements order with a nod of recognition from us. The story of a mystery brings us to a conclusion but no clear answer. We piece that together ourselves and in doing so the mirror in the story appears. In searching for an objective answer with the empirical evidence of the text, the good story reveals to us our thinking, our intent, until there we stand, inside the story. A mystery story is explorative and uncovering. It opens pieces of ourselves to the atmosphere. The good story disrupts, it reshuffles the elements and we respond with a pensive silence of acknowledgement. The story of an enigma simply stops. It is the caesura of a narrative that leaves us with a spent lung, clutching for breath. As if it were a transparent sheet of glass, the story of an enigma is a window. It offers little physical purchase but the clearest view of what exists outside. The story of an enigma doesn’t apologise and will offer many conflicting responses in us, it may disgust us, we may loathe it. We may entirely reject and hate it, but we cannot argue with it and, consequently, the enigma will never leave us. The great story simply is. It expands across our consciousness with a lost stare in return.

Today, we tell too many adequate stories. Modern blockbusters and their marketing promise mystery but offer only puzzles, a story that’s clear in its design and does not invert or subvert any form of order. Hence the popular use of what is called ‘Mystery Box’ storytelling, yet that is precisely not what they are. These stories more firmly resemble the effect of someone presenting an already solved mystery to you. The filmmakers or authors have done the solving for you and you are then able to see its working with a simple “Ahh” of understanding. They offer a definite answer and the answer is always final. There is no need to return to the answer. It offers nothing lasting. If we are lucky we get a good story that has an ending but offers no answer, instead it asks us to come to it ourselves, and so we find ourselves inside it. We seldom are given great stories. Few is the time a work will leave us questioning everything and our place within it. An enigma is hardest to render, undoubtedly, but these stories do exist and are being overlooked in favour of the self-affirming ring of the puzzle. Gambling is a puzzle and has its reward. People are a mystery and have their rewards. Existence is an enigma and offers no reward. But telling the story of an enigma has merit. In telling your story, make it enigmatic.