Water, Gas, And Electricity.
There are some half-dozen puzzles, as old as the hills, that are
perpetually cropping up, and there is hardly a month in the year that
does not bring inquiries as to their solution. Occasionally one of
these, t...
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How To Draw An Oval.
Can you draw a perfect oval on a sheet of paper with one sweep of the
compasses? It is one of the easiest things in the world when you know
how.
...
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The Six Frogs.
The six educated frogs in the illustration are trained to reverse their
order, so that their numbers shall read 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, with the blank
square in its present position. They can jump to the next square ...
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King Arthur's Knights.
King Arthur sat at the Round Table on three successive evenings with his
knights--Beleobus, Caradoc, Driam, Eric, Floll, and Galahad--but on no
occasion did any person have as his neighbour one who had before s...
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The Hymn-board Poser.
The worthy vicar of Chumpley St. Winifred is in great distress. A little
church difficulty has arisen that all the combined intelligence of the
parish seems unable to surmount. What this difficulty is I will st...
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Five Jealous Husbands.
During certain local floods five married couples found themselves
surrounded by water, and had to escape from their unpleasant position in
a boat that would only hold three persons at a time. Every husband was
...
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The Troublesome Eight.
Nearly everybody knows that a "magic square" is an arrangement of
numbers in the form of a square so that every row, every column, and
each of the two long diagonals adds up alike. For example, you would
find l...
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The Pebble Game.
Here is an interesting little puzzle game that I used to play with an
acquaintance on the beach at Slocomb-on-Sea. Two players place an odd
number of pebbles, we will say fifteen, between them. Then each takes ...
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Simple Multiplication.
If we number six cards 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 8, and arrange them on the
table in this order:--
1 4 2 8 5 7
We can demonstrate that in order to multiply by 3 all that is necessary
is to remo...
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Ancient Chinese Puzzle.
My next puzzle is supposed to be Chinese, many hundreds of years old,
and never fails to interest. White to play and mate, moving each of the
three pieces once, and once only.
...
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The Honeycomb Puzzle.
Here is a little puzzle with the simplest possible conditions. Place the
point of your pencil on a letter in one of the cells of the honeycomb,
and trace out a very familiar proverb by passing always from a cel...
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The Tethered Goat.
Here is a little problem that everybody should know how to solve. The
goat is placed in a half-acre meadow, that is in shape an equilateral
triangle. It is tethered to a post at one corner of the field. What
sh...
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A Juvenile Puzzle.
For years I have been perpetually consulted by my juvenile friends about
this little puzzle. Most children seem to know it, and yet, curiously
enough, they are invariably unacquainted with the answer. The quest...
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A Post-office Perplexity.
In every business of life we are occasionally perplexed by some chance
question that for the moment staggers us. I quite pitied a young lady in
a branch post-office when a gentleman entered and deposited a crow...
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The Magic Strips.
I happened to have lying on my table a number of strips of cardboard,
with numbers printed on them from 1 upwards in numerical order. The idea
suddenly came to me, as ideas have a way of unexpectedly coming, to...
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A Match Mystery.
Here is a little game that is childishly simple in its conditions. But
it is well worth investigation.
Mr. Stubbs pulled a small table between himself and his friend, Mr.
Wilson, and took a box of matches, from...
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Two Crosses From One
Cut a Greek cross into five pieces that will form two such crosses, both
of the same size. The solution of this puzzle is very beautiful....
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The Silk Patchwork
The lady members of the Wilkinson family had made a simple patchwork
quilt, as a small Christmas present, all composed of square pieces of
the same size, as shown in the illustration. It only lacked the four
...
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A Chain Puzzle.
This is a puzzle based on a pretty little idea first dealt with by the
late Mr. Sam Loyd. A man had nine pieces of chain, as shown in the
illustration. He wanted to join these fifty links into one endless
chain...
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Counting The Rectangles.
Can you say correctly just how many squares and other rectangles the
chessboard contains? In other words, in how great a number of different
ways is it possible to indicate a square or other rectangle enclosed ...
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