The Canterbury Puzzles, and Other Curious Problems. Henry Ernest Dudeney
the thing to be of trivial importance, yet we are impelled to master it; and when we have succeeded there is a pleasure and a sense of satisfaction that are a quite sufficient reward for our trouble, even when there is no prize to be won. What is this mysterious charm that many find irresistible? Why do we like to be puzzled? The curious thing is that directly the enigma is solved the interest generally vanishes. We have done it, and that is enough. But why did we ever attempt to do it?
The answer is simply that it gave us pleasure to seek the solution—that the pleasure was all in the seeking and finding for their own sakes. A good puzzle, like virtue, is its own reward. Man loves to be confronted by a mystery, and he is not entirely happy until he has solved it. We never like to feel our mental inferiority to those around us. The spirit of rivalry is innate in man; it stimulates the smallest child, in play or education, to keep level with his fellows, and in later life it turns men into great discoverers, inventors, orators, heroes, artists, and (if they have more material aims) perhaps millionaires.
In starting on a tour through the wide realm of Puzzledom we do well to remember that we shall meet with points of interest of a very varied character. I shall take advantage of this variety. People often make the mistake of confining themselves to one little corner of the realm, and thereby miss opportunities of new pleasures that lie within their reach around them. One person will keep to acrostics and other word puzzles, another to mathematical brain-rackers, another to chess problems (which are merely puzzles on the chess-board, and have little practical relation to the game of chess), and so on. This is a mistake, because it restricts one's pleasures, and neglects that variety which is so good for the brain.
And there is really a practical utility in puzzle-solving. Regular exercise is supposed to be as necessary for the brain as for the body, and in both cases it is not so much what we do as the doing of it from which we derive benefit. The daily walk recommended by the doctor for the good of the body, or the daily exercise for the brain, may in itself appear to be so much waste of time; but it is the truest economy in the end. Albert Smith, in one of his amusing novels, describes a woman who was convinced that she suffered from "cobwigs on the brain." This may be a very rare complaint, but in a more metaphorical sense many of us are very apt to suffer from mental cobwebs, and there is nothing equal to the solving of puzzles and problems for sweeping them away. They keep the brain alert, stimulate the imagination, and develop the reasoning faculties. And not only are they useful in this indirect way, but they often directly help us by teaching us some little tricks and "wrinkles" that can be applied in the affairs of life at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected ways.
There is an interesting passage in praise of puzzles in the quaint letters of Fitzosborne. Here is an extract: "The ingenious study of making and solving puzzles is a science undoubtedly of most necessary acquirement, and deserves to make a part in the meditation of both sexes. It is an art, indeed, that I would recommend to the encouragement of both the Universities, as it affords the easiest and shortest method of conveying some of the most useful principles of logic. It was the maxim of a very wise prince that 'he who knows not how to dissemble knows not how to reign'; and I desire you to receive it as mine, that 'he who knows not how to riddle knows not how to live.'"
How are good puzzles invented? I am not referring to acrostics, anagrams, charades, and that sort of thing, but to puzzles that contain an original idea. Well, you cannot invent a good puzzle to order, any more than you can invent anything else in that manner. Notions for puzzles come at strange times and in strange ways. They are suggested by something we see or hear, and are led up to by other puzzles that come under our notice. It is useless to say, "I will sit down and invent an original puzzle," because there is no way of creating an idea; you can only make use of it when it comes. You may think this is wrong, because an expert in these things will make scores of puzzles while another person, equally clever, cannot invent one "to save his life," as we say. The explanation is very simple. The expert knows an idea when he sees one, and is able by long experience to judge of its value. Fertility, like facility, comes by practice.
Sometimes a new and most interesting idea is suggested by the blunder of somebody over another puzzle. A boy was given a puzzle to solve by a friend, but he misunderstood what he had to do, and set about attempting what most likely everybody would have told him was impossible. But he was a boy with a will, and he stuck at it for six months, off and on, until he actually succeeded. When his friend saw the solution, he said, "This is not the puzzle I intended—you misunderstood me—but you have found out something much greater!" And the puzzle which that boy accidentally discovered is now in all the old puzzle books.
Puzzles can be made out of almost anything, in the hands of the ingenious person with an idea. Coins, matches, cards, counters, bits of wire or string, all come in useful. An immense number of puzzles have been made out of the letters of the alphabet, and from those nine little digits and cipher, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 0.
It should always be remembered that a very simple person may propound a problem that can only be solved by clever heads—if at all. A child asked, "Can God do everything?" On receiving an affirmative reply, she at once said: "Then can He make a stone so heavy that He can't lift it?" Many wide-awake grown-up people do not at once see a satisfactory answer. Yet the difficulty lies merely in the absurd, though cunning, form of the question, which really amounts to asking, "Can the Almighty destroy His own omnipotence?" It is somewhat similar to the other question, "What would happen if an irresistible moving body came in contact with an immovable body?" Here we have simply a contradiction in terms, for if there existed such a thing as an immovable body, there could not at the same time exist a moving body that nothing could resist.
Professor Tyndall used to invite children to ask him puzzling questions, and some of them were very hard nuts to crack. One child asked him why that part of a towel that was dipped in water was of a darker colour than the dry part. How many readers could give the correct reply? Many people are satisfied with the most ridiculous answers to puzzling questions. If you ask, "Why can we see through glass?" nine people out of ten will reply, "Because it is transparent;" which is, of course, simply another way of saying, "Because we can see through it."
Puzzles have such an infinite variety that it is sometimes very difficult to divide them into distinct classes. They often so merge in character that the best we can do is to sort them into a few broad types. Let us take three or four examples in illustration of what I mean.
First there is the ancient Riddle, that draws upon the imagination and play of fancy. Readers will remember the riddle of the Sphinx, the monster of Bœotia who propounded enigmas to the inhabitants and devoured them if they failed to solve them. It was said that the Sphinx would destroy herself if one of her riddles was ever correctly answered. It was this: "What animal walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?" It was explained by Œdipus, who pointed out that man walked on his hands and feet in the morning of life, at the noon of life he walked erect, and in the evening of his days he supported his infirmities with a stick. When the Sphinx heard this explanation, she dashed her head against a rock and immediately expired. This shows that puzzle solvers may be really useful on occasion.
Then there is the riddle propounded by Samson. It is perhaps the first prize competition in this line on record, the prize being thirty sheets and thirty changes of garments for a correct solution. The riddle was this: "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness." The answer was, "A honey-comb in the body of a dead lion." To-day this sort of riddle survives in such a form as, "Why does a chicken cross the road?" to which most people give the answer, "To get to the other side;" though the correct reply is, "To worry the chauffeur." It has degenerated into the conundrum, which is usually based on a mere pun. For example, we have been asked from our infancy, "When is a door not a door?" and here again the answer usually furnished ("When it is a-jar") is not the correct one. It should be, "When it is a negress (an egress)."
There is the large class of Letter Puzzles, which are based on the little peculiarities of the language in which they are written—such as anagrams, acrostics, word-squares, and charades. In this class we also find palindromes, or words and sentences that read backwards and forwards alike. These must be very ancient indeed, if it be true that Adam introduced himself to Eve (in the English language, be it noted) with the palindromic words, "Madam, I'm