Get ready for a story that will seriously restore your faith in the human spirit: This man survived on a remote island for six months without any puzzles.
Wow. What a truly remarkable feat.
Last summer, 42-year-old Peter Thune’s South American vacation went awry when the small plane he was traveling on crashed on a remote island in the Atlantic. As Peter searched through the wreckage of the aircraft, he tragically discovered that there were no other survivors and that the plane contained no puzzles whatsoever.
Yes, you read that right. No books of crosswords. No Rubik’s cubes. Not so much as a children’s magazine with a simple word search. His phone was obliterated; every laptop was gone. Peter was suddenly completely alone, stranded in the middle of the ocean, with nary a puzzle in sight.
It’s hard to imagine a more terrifying situation .
Every morning of the ordeal, Peter had no choice but to summon all the resilience in the world and live to fight another day, knowing that it was possible he would never again have his mind boggled by an awesome brain teaser. Peter reports that in moments of desperation, he found himself hallucinating an iPad bearing the New York Times crossword of the day or even an easy 100-piece jigsaw —something, anything to utilize his quick wit and problem-solving skills.
Fortunately, a search and rescue team eventually found Peter and airlifted him to a hospital where he smiled the biggest smile of his life as he was treated with fluids and given full access to a book called Ultimate Brain Games For Adults.
So incredible! This just goes to show that when push comes to shove, there’s nothing we humans can’t survive. Fingers crossed a fate like this never befalls you, but if it should, know that you, too, can live without puzzles longer than you think.
