MIT's Puzzle Corner returns with a new crew and a 60-year legacy

The MIT Technology Review’s Puzzle Corner is back for its September/October 2026 edition, and there’s been a changing of the guard. The legendary column, which has been a staple for mathematically inclined readers since 1966, is now under the stewardship of a new team calling themselves the Puzzle Corner Puzzle Crew, or PC2. Michael S. Branicky, ScD ‘95, is leading the charge, joined by Edward Faulkner ‘03, MEng ‘04, and Abe Kunin ‘03.

It’s a passing of the torch from editor emeritus Allan Gottlieb ‘67, who launched this institution nearly six decades ago. That kind of longevity in a magazine column is almost unheard of. Gottlieb’s original run built a dedicated following that spanned generations of MIT alumni and logic puzzle enthusiasts. The new crew isn’t starting from scratch, either — they’re actively soliciting new problems and solutions from readers, with a submission deadline of October 1st.

The column’s endurance says something about the MIT community’s appetite for intellectual play outside the digital realm. While the rest of the magazine covers breakthrough AI models and cybersecurity vulnerabilities, Puzzle Corner remains stubbornly analog. You can practically smell the pencil shavings. Readers who want to dig into the archives can find back issues through 2022 on Gottlieb’s NYU page, with more recent ones on the Review’s site.

What makes this handoff interesting isn’t just the nostalgia factor. It’s that three MIT grads are volunteering to keep a print-era tradition alive in 2026. No algorithmic puzzle generator, no app, no gamified leaderboard — just problems, solutions, and an email address. In a media environment where everything gets optimized for engagement, there’s something quietly radical about that.