Lithner's Progressive Matrices (4 × 4)

Some puzzles are solved with a pencil. Others are solved with posture.

With the way you sit down, breathe, and decide to pay attention. The twenty 4×4 progressive matrices in this book belong to the second kind. They are demanding. Each grid asks you to track several changes at once, rotations that accelerate or reverse, positions that orbit, counts that rise and fall with hidden cadence. To reach the missing cell you must infer the rules, not merely spot a shape. And yes, the rules are intentional: every matrix is hand-built to be fair, logically governed, and solvable from information on the page alone. What makes them challenging to solve makes them equally challenging to create. Designing a good matrix is choreography: outer shapes might rotate clockwise while inner shapes counter-rotate; markers step through positions; dot patterns follow a sequence (triangular numbers, modular counts, or spiral indices); rings appear with a fixed frequency per row or column. Do too little, and the answer is obvious. Do too much, and the logic turns to noise. The right line between depth and clarity is thin and building on it is, for me, as close to a sanctuary as one gets. Hours disappear; everything narrows to balance and restraint. If the grids feel exacting, know they were composed with the same care you will bring to solving them.