There’s something timeless about puzzles. Humans have always been drawn to the challenge of piecing things together. After watching the final of Destination X – where contestants criss-cross Europe trying to guess their hidden location – and Thursday Murder Club – Netflix’s latest ‘Who dunnit?’ movie – I was reminded how much joy we take from problem-solving.There’s a thrill of thinking critically, spotting patterns, and connecting the dots.

In an age where AI is supposedly doing much of the “thinking” for us, some have voiced concerns that we’re outsourcing too much. A recent MIT study even suggested that heavy reliance on AI tools might erode certain cognitive skills. But that’s only half the story. History shows us that when technology takes one kind of work off our plate, we don’t stop thinking, we simply redirect our curiosity elsewhere. Our appetite for discovery, challenge, and critical reflection has never vanished and never will. 

This has important implications for professionals in communications. People still crave knowledge, but increasingly, they want it presented in ways that stimulate the same brain circuits that a good puzzle does. That’s why shows like Destination X, escape rooms, murder mystery podcasts, and quiz nights thrive. They turn information into an experience and entertainment. 

For brands, there’s an opportunity to create content that engages your audience in solving, connecting, and decoding. That could take the form of interactive campaigns that ask people to uncover a brand story piece by piece, or thought leadership presented as a series of provocative questions rather than definitive answers, or even gamified experiences that weave education into play.

I encourage communications professionals to think beyond providing information faster (AI already does that), but instead understand our deeper psychological drive to figure things out. Knowledge wrapped in entertainment, insight revealed through interaction, this is where people lean in.

So, as AI continues to reshape how information flows, it’s worth remembering that our joy in solving problems is deeply human, deeply enduring, and brimming with creative potential for communicators. The challenge for brands is not to compete with the machine, but to create spaces where audiences can exercise their critical thinking and enjoy the journey as much as the destination.