The difference between puzzles and mysteries

The difference between puzzles and mysteriesFormer Enron CEO Jeffrey Skillingwas sentenced to 24 years for fraud.
Puzzles and mysteries are both forms of deception, but they’re different.

Puzzles have one answer. Once you discover that answer you’ve solved the puzzle. Puzzles rely on one side keeping a secret and the other side finding out the secret.

Mysteries depend on your skill. All the information is right in front of you, and it’s up to you to figure out what’s going on.

Gregory F. Treverton talks about these differences in his book Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information:

"Cold War intelligence lived in a world where information was scarce; it relied on "secrets" not otherwise available. Its business was those secrets. Now, though, it faces an era of information. Information and its sources are mushrooming, and so are the technologies for moving information rapidly around the globe. Given these circumstances, the business of intelligence is no longer just to provide secrets; rather, its business is to produce high-quality understanding of the world using all sources."

In an article in The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell explains these differences as they’re related to the Enron scandal, where shifty accounting practices led to the destruction of both the energy company Enron and the accounting firm Arthur Anderson. Mr. Gladwell touches on Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling, Watergate, the German secret weapon the V-1 rocket, prostate cancer, and the Cold War:






Read Mr. Gladwell’s entire article: Open Secrets: Enron, intelligence, and the perils of too much information. The New Yorker (in single page format)>>

Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information by Gregory F. Treverton>>

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