ENIGMAS
Archbishop Whately’s
When from the Ark’s capacious round,
The world came forth in pairs,
Who was it that first heard the sound
Of boots upon the stairs?
Charles James Fox’s
What is pretty and useful in various ways,
Tho’ it tempts some poor mortals to shorten their days;
Take one letter from it and there will appear
What youngsters admire every day in the year;
Take two letters from it, and then, without doubt,
You are what that is, if you don’t find it out.
Hallam’s
I sit on a rock whilst I’m raising the wind,
But the storm once abated, I’m gentle and kind;
I have kings at my feet who await but my nod
To kneel in the dust of the ground I have trod.
Though seen to the world, I’m known to but few;
The Gentile detests me, I’m pork to the Jew;
I never have passed but one night in the dark,
And that was with Noah alone in the ark;
My weight is three pounds, my length is a mile;
And when I’m discovered you’ll say with a smile,
That my last and my first are the best of our Isle.
Lord Macaulay’s
Cut off my head, and singular I am;
Cut off my tail, and plural I appear;
Cut off my head and tail, and, wondrous feat!
Although my middle’s left, there’s nothing there.
What is my head, cut off?—a sounding sea;
What is my tail, cut off?—a rushing river;
And in their mighty depths I fearless play,
Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.
Dr. S. Weir Mitchell’s
A simple go-between am I,
Without a thought of pride;
I part the gathered thoughts of men,
And liberally divide.
I set the soul of Shakespeare free,
To Milton’s thoughts give liberty,
Bid Sidney speak with freer speech,
Let Spenser sing and Taylor preach.
Though through all learning swift I glide,
No wisdom doth with me abide.—A paper cutter.
Miss Seward’s
The noblest object in the works of art.
The brightest scene that nature doth impart.
The well known signal in the time of peace.
The point essential in the tenant’s lease.
The ploughman’s comfort while he holds the plough.
The soldier’s duty and the lover’s vow.
The prize that merit never yet has won.
The planet seen between the earth and sun.
The miser’s idol and the badge of Jews.
The wife’s ambition and the parson’s dues.
Now if your nobler spirit can divine
A corresponding word for every line,
By the first letters clearly will be shown
An ancient city of no small renown.
Palindromic Enigma
First find out a word that doth silence proclaim, }
And that backwards and forwards is always the same; } Mum.
Then next you must find a feminine name, }
That backwards and forwards is always the same; } Anna.
An act or a writing on parchment whose name }
Both backwards and forwards is always the same; } Deed.
A fruit that is rare whose botanical name }
Read backwards and forwards is always the same; } Anana.
A note used in music which time doth proclaim, }
And backwards and forwards is always the same; } Minim.
Their initials connected a title will frame }
That is justly the due of the fair married dame, } Madam.
Which backwards and forwards is always the same. }
A Fugitive Sigh
It came, though I fetched it; when come, it was gone;
It stayed but a moment—it could not stay long;
I ask not who saw it—it could not be seen;
And yet might be felt by a king or a queen.
Arithmetical Puzzle
A landed man two daughters had,
And both were very fair;
He gave to each a piece of land,
One round, the other square.
At twenty pounds the acre just,
Each piece its value had;
The shillings which encompassed each,
For each exactly paid.
If ‘cross a shilling be an inch,
As it is very near,
Who had the better portion—
That had the round, or square?
What Becomes of the Pins?
A London journal offered a prize of £2 2s. for a reasonable solution of “What becomes of the pins!” The following reply captured the ducats:
“A surface ten miles square contains 310,000,000 square yards. Assume this as the area of London. To include the area of floor surface in houses, it may safely be trebled—say 1,000,000,000 square yards. If every five square yards contained one stray pin, who would be aware of it? Here, then, we have in London alone a receptacle for 200,000,000 of stray pins unperceived by anybody. The answer, therefore, is that thousands of millions of lost pins can be, and are, scattered about the land unnoticed. Half of these, being out of doors, are gradually destroyed by rust; the other half pass out of doors by degrees.”
Charades
My first is followed by a bird,
My second’s met by plasters,
My whole’s more shunned, but less absurd
Than prigs or poetasters;
’Tis also a symbolic word
For architects’ disasters.
My first, invisible as air,
Apportions things of earth by line and square,
The soul of pathos, eloquence, and wit,
My second shows each passion’s changeful fit.
My whole, though motionless, declares
In many ways how everybody fares.
The Reverend Hildebrand Pusey de Vere,
Whose living was worth some two thousand a year,
Was a pattern of parsons—wrote rhythmical flummery
Far better than Gaber, or Keble, or Gomery;
His parishioners all might be Brahmins or Hindoos,
If they’d only subscribe for stained glass in the windows.
But of all his offences perhaps this was the worst,
He entered the lectern arrayed in my first.
His brother, Sir Arthur, a careless M. P.,
Was a man about town full of frolic and glee.
His creed was my second—good Hildebrand’s homilies,
He thought dry and dusty, and full of anomalies;
Well loved he clear music of foxhound and horn
When the Autumn sun rose on brown uplands of Quorn.
He never drank wine of inferior quality,
And he lived in my whole with a great deal of jollity.
Mortimer Collins.
Richard Porson’s Charades
My first is expressive of no disrespect,
Yet I never shall call you it while you are by;
If my second you still are resolved to reject,
As dead as my third I shall speedily lie.
If nature and fortune had placed me with you
On my first, we my second might hope to obtain;
I might marry you, were I my third, it is true,
But the marriage would only embitter my pain.
My first is the lot that is destined by fate
For my second to meet with in every state;
My third is by many philosophers reckoned
To bring very often my first to my second.
My first, from the thief though your house it defends,
Like a slave, or a cheat, you abuse or despise;
My second, though brief, yet alas! comprehends
All the good, all the great, all the learned, all the wise;
Of my third I have little or nothing to say,
Except that it marks the departure of day.
My first, ’tis said, in ghosts abounds,
And wheresoe’er she walks her rounds,
My second never fails to go,
Yet oft attends her mortal foe.
If with my third you quench your thirst,
You sink forever in my first.
Genealogical Puzzle
A wedding there was, and a dance there must be,
And who should be first? Thus all did agree—
First grandsire and grandame should lead the dance down;
Two fathers, two mothers, should step the same ground.
Two daughters stood up and danced with their sires
(The room was so warm they wanted no fires);
And also two sons who danced with their mothers.
Two sisters there were who danced with their brothers;
Two uncles vouchsafed with nieces to dance,
With nephews to jig it and please their two aunts.
Three husbands would dance with none but their wives
(As bent so to do for the rest of their lives).
The granddaughter chose the jolly grandson;
And bride—she would dance with bridegroom—or none.
A company choice! their number to fix,
I told them all over, and found them but six.
Marigold
A name the sweetest said or sung
In any land, in any tongue;
Borne by the peasant and the queen;
In Holy Writ ’tis often seen.
A potent cause of love or hate;
Umpire of fortune and of fate;
A dross, a curse, a slave, a toy;
All men this tyrant’s yoke enjoy.
Yet sacred name and gilded snare
Together form a flower fair;
Its glowing blossoms court the sun
Till autumn’s bounteous reign is done.
Sir Hilary’s Prayer
Winthrop Mackworth Praed, who seems to have had a special fondness for charades, left nearly forty excellent ones in his published works, the solution of which, in every case but one, is clear and satisfactory. The exception is “Sir Hilary’s Prayer at Agincourt,” as follows:
Sir Hilary charged at Agincourt,
Sooth, ’twas an awful day!
And though in that old age of sport
The rufflers of the camp and court
Had little time to pray,
’Tis said Sir Hilary muttered there
Two syllables by way of prayer.
My first to all the brave and proud
Who see to-morrow’s sun;
My next with her cold and quiet cloud
To those who find their dewy shroud
Before to-day’s be done;
And both together to all blue eyes
That weep when a warrior nobly dies.
When this appeared, several answers followed. That which was usually accepted was Good Night. Not satisfied with this, an English lady wrote to the Princess Mele, Praed’s daughter, at Naples, presuming that she would be able to speak with full knowledge of the subject. In her reply she said,—“As to my dear father’s charade, Sir Hilary, there is not the smallest question that the answer is Good Night—an unsatisfactory answer, as he himself felt, but that that was the word in his mind when he wrote the charade there cannot be the shadow of a doubt.”
Nevertheless, as the Lord Chancellor said, we doubt. A far better solution of the prayer is Aide, Dieu! Help, Lord! Aid is needed for the small band of young men who are to march out to fight at dawn; the dew (Dieu) will fall in a cold and quiet cloud on the bodies of the slain; and Adieu (with which Aide-Dieu will, even when spoken with no inordinate rapidity, be almost identical in sound) is expressive of the sorrowful parting.
A distinguished Boston clergyman, desiring to inform his mother of an interesting domestic event, sent her a postal card containing the following directions:
“From sweet Isaiah’s sacred song, ninth chapter and verse six,
First thirteen words please take, and then the following affix;
From Genesis, the thirty-fifth, verse seventeen, no more,
Then add verse twenty-six of Kings, book second, chapter four;
The last two verses, chapter first, first book of Samuel,
And you will learn, what on that day, your loving son befell.”