Start with a runner who can never finish a race and end with a solid ball cut into five pieces and reassembled into two of the same size. Nothing along the way is a trick — each step is the honest consequence of the one before it.
Learning paths
Ordered routes through the collection. Each step explains why it follows the one before it, so a path is an argument rather than a list.
A single sentence about itself brings down a 2,000-year-old assumption, then takes set theory and finally arithmetic with it. This is the shortest route from a schoolyard riddle to the limits of mathematics.
Five puzzles where the correct answer feels obviously wrong. Together they form a short course in the two questions people never think to ask: how many chances were there really, and how did I come to be shown this?
Five theorems that say "you cannot do this", in order of how much they hurt. Between them they explain why distributed systems are hard in a way that no amount of better engineering will fix.
Every person acts sensibly and the group still ends up somewhere none of them wanted. Five results showing that this is not a failure of character but a structural feature of putting preferences together.