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He took over the classic puzzle column from Martin Gardner and went meta/philosophical with it. I think his later work on analogies and philosophy of mind is more a descendent of this than GEB, which was a bit of a brilliant cul de sac.
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His essays on creativity in that book were a kind of big influence on me. The second(?) chapter on Rubik's cubes especially. Hofstadter made it plausible that: "Creativity can be awesome BUT ALSO ultimately mechanical <like so...>" This is a "surprisingly still rare" insight.
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