202608The Concrete Tastes Better than a Bridle

The Concrete Tastes Better than a Bridle

Tags: #opinion #ai #ux

Written: 2026-08-21

I know what you are thinking, “Oh, the opinion tag. This is just going to be yet another of the many ‘old man yells at sky’ blog posts. I can just skip this, it has no worth to a reader”

Yeah.

Probably.

Old Man Yells at Sky

I love a good puzzle.

If you are here, chances are you do too.

This is no surprise. Everyone with a twinge of curiosity loves a good puzzle.

I love a bad puzzle.

Now that isn’t as common. But I have the sneaking suspicion you might like a bad puzzle more than you realize.

For a good puzzle you need many things. To start with, you need structure, you need balance, you need a hook, you need more things than could fit in a textbook, let alone this paragraph.

A good puzzle is an art, crafted by careful consideration and years of practice.

A bad puzzle is a bit easier and it only takes one ingredient: something the viewer doesn’t know.

I’ll give you a bad puzzle right now: I read this book with such an emotional scene with some girl and a flute. I think it was set in Europe?

That’s all.

No hints. No background. No confirmation if that wild guess was correct. Most true artists of the bad puzzle genre do not realize they even made one.

But dear god do they catch me each and every time.

Why I Took Photos of the Same Rock for Five Years Straight

Once you hit a certain level of curiosity and analytic personality, you become a scientist. There is no education nor ability required. All you need is a question, and a plan to get an answer.

Bad puzzles are the opiate of the inner scientist. Once you get a taste, you will risk life, limb and society to fill that craving.

Some notable bad puzzles that people have died for:

  • What’s up with that rock over there?1
  • Who’s a good boy?2
  • What’s up with that other rock over there?3

For most of us laypeople, we tend to field less monumental bad puzzles. Mine was a brief question asked by my dad as we walked along the beach.

“Is the sand getting higher?”

See, he was looking at the rocks we used as stairs down to the beach, and noticed that last year’s bottom step was now about -3 inches off the ground.

This (annoyingly) caught me. He had pulled a 360 no-scope of a nerd snipe.4 Obviously the beach was not rising, that would be crazy. But we only had one data point: a year ago we had x rocks showing, and today we had x-1.

So, as the clickbait header loosely describes, I stood in the same spot and took the same photo of the same rock every time we would visit the beach over the next 5 years. Until finally, I had satisfyingly shown the beach was always changing; there is no trend in any one direction.5 And I was happy.

Now that was a more extended, formal bad puzzle, but we handle the common ones every day:

  • What is the next lyric to the song stuck in my head?
  • Is that camera in the Craigslist post really worth $80?
  • Where can I find a good sun hat?

“But”, I hear you thinking, “there is already a term dumbass, it’s just a question.”

And I say to you, dear reader, just you wait for the next title card.

The Hardly Dangerous Game

Humans are naturally hunters. Before we figured out how to build bungalows and print pamphlets, we figured out how to hit tasty things with rocks.

Over time we got really good at this. We made the rocks sharper, even found ways to hit ‘em from far away. The real innovation however, happened when we figured out how to hunt in fenced pastures rather than limitless wild lands.

Dragonflies are considered one of the most effective hunters on the planet at >95% success rate6, but my retired aunt with a turkey farm is batting 1000.

We are the best hunters to have existed. So perfect that it is rarely even called hunting. The game has changed. We won. But we have not changed, the hunt still calls us.7

So instead we hunt for facts.8

These bad puzzles are just excuses for that deepest desire to figure out the signs, follow the trail, and finish the job. These are not just questions, for the answers don’t matter. They are puzzles. The journey is the goal.

If I search a 1973 catalog for six hours to decipher the exact model of the camera in that pile, I still will not buy it. I don’t care that it is $80 and I just found out it is an exclusive version only manufactured for three months and goes for $400 on eBay.

I care that I went on this hunt, and got my target.

Boohoo, Someone Else Prepped My Steak

This aspect of human nature is very hard to address, made worse by the fact that it is contrary to our stated goals.

As such, it gets ignored or avoided when it comes to UX.

We have reached a point where I can type “youb” into a browser, and Google will know that I want https://YouTube.com. This is not guesswork nor a coincidence. It is the product of armies of PhDs, and centuries of human effort.

Sometimes though, I desire the bad puzzle. Sometimes I want to type “book with girl playing flute Europe” and spend the effort it takes to catch the answer.9

This is at serious risk of disappearing.

No need to waste a day, I just tap the photo now. Just activate equations beyond my comprehension, that scour the entirety of human knowledge, and tell me it is a Ricoh Auto TLS EE, worth $400.

It answered the question. It got it right.

So I swipe to the next post and move on with my day. More productive. Better tools. Itching for the hunt.

They’re Playing Me Off

I want to say that this is important but impossible to design for. We need to accept a bit of “anti-design” when we make things. Leave some bits rough and untouched, for the human nature to handle.

The perfect UI is a single button that does exactly what the users wants in that exact moment. The perfect UX has a panel of buttons with one they forgot to assign. One that some users tap when bored.

Making better will not reach best. The best bad puzzle was not built. It came from within.

Thank you, and good night.10

Footnotes

  1. Marie Curie, 1896 ↩

  2. Homo Sapiens, circa 20-40 kya ↩

  3. NASA, 1955 ↩

  4. https://xkcd.com/356 ↩

  5. It only took 3 years to prove the point, the other two were waiting for him to ask the question again to prove it satisfyingly ↩

  6. It’s accurate, I Googled that like a minute ago ↩

  7. Even if you do not eat meat. Just roll with it ↩

  8. See, told you I would get around to it. ↩

  9. For those playing at home, good luck guessing the book. $20 if you get it, I won’t wait up. ↩

  10. Forgot to explain the title: I’d rather trip on a rock and go face first into the sidewalk than get lead to the path without rocks. ↩