Premium Deal Alert: 28 January 2025

When you're done admiring Singapore's massive supertrees, make a stop at the National Museum to puzzle over a centuries-old enigma: the mystery of the Singapore Stone.

The Stone itself is part of a huge sandstone tablet that once stood at the mouth of the Singapore River... until the British blew it up in 1843. One officer was mindful enough to save three pieces of the slab, and today only one remains, displaying a fragment of its original message.

What was that message, you ask?

Here's where the mystery comes in: Nobody knows. Not only is the text damaged and faded, it's also written in a language that nobody has ever seen before. Oh, and this unknown language uses a writing system that, again, has never been seen before. Not in Singapore, not in Malaysia, not anywhere else on the planet.

Now that's a riddle worth seeing in person :-)