You Can Solve All the World’s Problems With a Bracket

Plug 64 of anything into a bracket, and you’ll get an answer.

On Sunday night, the brackets for both the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments were announced. (You can, and should, join my own free men’s bracket and women’s bracket.) College basketball, as much as I personally love it, is not nearly as popular as it once was, but the tournament itself remains immortal. Your office will be filling out brackets all week, and your office pool will undoubtedly be won by someone who hasn’t watched a game all year.

The beauty of the bracket has always been in its definitiveness. You pour 64 teams into it, and through a series of individual matchups, you determine a clear, unquestioned champions. If you’re in the bracket, and you don’t lose a matchup, you are the champion. Sixty-four (or 68, these days) teams enter, one team leaves. You get an answer. We always want answers.

The simple purity of the bracket is its ability to provide those answers. And it makes you wish all of the world’s debates and problems could be solved so easily. This was the premise of a book way back in 2009, called The Final Four of Everything, in which writers as varied as Kurt Anderson, Franz Lidz, Franklin Foer, David Maraniss, Daniel Okrent, Virgnia Heffernan, Bill Carter, A.O. Scott, Richard…