Anekanta, points of view, is a table puzzle: a few things go on a small table, people sit around it, and each says what they see from their own chair. On Yukti, a daily logic puzzle at playyukti.com, you place the things so every sentence is true. Below: where it comes from, the method and a small example.
Kind of thinking: Perspective
What is an Anekanta puzzle?
The table has nine places, three by three, or sixteen on Tough days. Some things are tall, like a lamp or a vase; some are short, like a cup or a bowl. Each person speaks from their own chair: "From here, the vase is left of the lamp", "The bowl hides the cup from me", "The cup is right at my edge of the table". Left and right are theirs, so two people can say the same words and mean opposite places.
A thing hides whatever is straight behind it, in that person's line of sight, if it's at least as tall. Choose a chair and the table turns so you sit there, with their view shown left to right.
Where does it come from?
In the Udana, a book of the Buddhist Pali Canon, the Buddha tells of blind men who each touch one part of an elephant. The one who feels the trunk says it's like the pole of a plough, the one at the foot says a post, the one at the ear says a winnowing basket. Each is describing what's in front of him, and none of them has the whole elephant.
Jain thinkers made the same parable the picture of anekantavada / अनेकान्तवाद, "many-sidedness": a thing has many sides, and a statement about it holds from a standpoint. Their method, syadvada, puts syat, "from some standpoint", in front of a claim. Every sentence in this puzzle is a syat sentence: true from that chair.
In 1948 the psychologists Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder asked children what a doll would see of three model mountains from the other side of a table. It became the classic test of taking another's point of view, and it is the table this puzzle uses.
How do you solve one?
- Start with "edge" sentences. "Right at my edge of the table" fixes a whole row of places at once.
- Chain the hiding. "A hides B" puts both in one straight line from that chair, A nearer. Two of them in a row can fill a line.
- Turn the table, not your head. Sit in each chair before you read their sentences. Their left is your right when they sit opposite you.
- Count the places in a line. Three things in one line of three leave no gaps, so the order settles every place.
- Read "left of" loosely. It means anywhere to the left, in any row, not next to.
A worked example: three things, two people
A lamp (tall), a cup and a bowl (both short). Sam sits at the front; Wen sits on the left side. Sam says: 1. "The lamp hides the bowl from me." 2. "The bowl hides the cup from me." Wen says: 3. "The cup is right at my edge of the table."
- Sentences 1 and 2: lamp, bowl and cup stand in one straight line going away from Sam, in that order.
- The line from Sam has only three places, so the lamp is at Sam's edge, the bowl in the middle row, the cup at the far edge.
- Which line? Sentence 3: the cup is at Wen's edge, the left side. So all three stand in the left-hand line, from Sam's view.
- Sit in Wen's chair to check: all three stand along Wen's edge, the cup on Wen's left, and from there nothing hides anything.
Three steps, one per thing, and every one certain. Neither of Sam's sentences names a place, yet together with Wen's they leave only one.
Tough days: Maya's hall of illusions
In the Mahabharata, Maya Danava builds a hall of illusions where Duryodhana takes a crystal floor for water and walks into real water thinking it floor. Yukti's tough days take place in a hall after Maya's: a bigger floor, pools where nothing can stand, and a crystal wall on the far side.
In the crystal wall you see the table from the far side: left and right stay the same, but near and far swap. So "In the crystal wall, the cup hides the bowl" means the cup is nearer the wall, in the same line. It's how a real mirror works: it swaps front and back, not left and right. Water is flat, so a pool never hides anything.
How does Yukti help when you are stuck?
Putting a thing where it breaks a sentence is stopped, and the board says whose sentence it breaks. It still counts as a step. A nudge asks you a question, such as "Whose sentences name the fewest places?". The day after, yesterday's route places the things in order, with the sentence behind each.
Sources
Read on 9 November 2026: Udana 6.4, Tittha Sutta (Thanissaro Bhikkhu's translation, Access to Insight); Blind men and an elephant (Wikipedia); Anekantavada and Syadvada (New World Encyclopedia); Three mountain problem (Wikipedia); Mahabharata, Sabha Parva (K. M. Ganguli's translation).