Lewis treats games, puzzles, and probability as devices to characterize Sam, describe Sam’s brain, and explain how he approached both interpersonal and business decisions. Sam’s engagement with games and puzzles illustrates his intelligence and portrays him as morally neutral, as well as someone who is both godlike and infantilized. This multifaceted portrayal illustrates the complex interplay between intelligence, morality, agency, and innocence.

Lewis describes Sam’s experiences with games and puzzles to demonstrate Sam’s unique intelligence. Many of Sam’s formative childhood experiences revolve around games, including his obsession with the strategy card game Magic: The Gathering, as well as the games and puzzles he engaged with at math camp. While Sam enjoyed these games, Lewis notes that, “By math camp standards he was only mediocre” at them (37). Lewis foreshadows Sam’s success in the world of finance, saying that “the sorts of games they played at math camp were too regular for his mind. ‘The place I am strongest is the place where you have to do things other people would find shocking,’ he said” (37). Sam found such a place at the trading firm Jane Street Capital. He aced his internship interview: “it appeared to Sam that God had tweaked trading in various ways, or at least games intended to simulate trading, to make it different from math and board games.