Daily History Challenge · No. 112 · Sunday 18 October 2026 · Gauntlet
Puzzle No. 112: Gauntlet
The Sunday Gauntlet: three before or after calls, four events to order and a final When? on Plato founds the Academy at Athens.
Act 1: Chain, against Mansa Musa's hajj displays the wealth of Mali to the world (1324 CE)
Before Mansa Musa's hajj displays the wealth of Mali to the world
After Mansa Musa's hajj displays the wealth of Mali to the world
After Mansa Musa's hajj displays the wealth of Mali to the world
Act 2: Order, earliest first
Act 3: When?
Around 387 BCE, after travels in southern Italy and Sicily, Plato established a school in a grove sacred to the hero Academus outside Athens, the Academy, often regarded as the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. There Plato taught and wrote dialogues that systematised Socratic inquiry into a vast philosophical project spanning ethics, politics, metaphysics, mathematics and the theory of Forms, eternal, perfect realities behind the changing world of appearances. The Academy gathered students and researchers in subjects from geometry to astronomy; tradition held that the inscription 'let no one ignorant of geometry enter' stood over its gate. Aristotle studied there for some twenty years before founding his own school. As an enduring community of teaching and research, the Academy provided an institutional model for organised education and persisted in various forms for centuries. Plato's writings became among the most influential in the history of thought, shaping philosophy, political theory, theology and science across the ancient, medieval and modern worlds.