THE RIDDLER.
The following queries are proposed for solution by some of our ingenious readers. Answers must be enclosed to the publisher on or before the first of April next. Fifty copies of the Comic Almanack (equivalent to a permanent provision for the receiver for life, with handsome reversions to his posterity), will be presented to any one who shall answer the whole correctly. We might have hesitated in making so stupendous an offer, but felt that the world required for the year 1852 some universal excitement, rather superior to that occasioned by the Exhibition of 1851.
CHARADE.
My first young ladies do at balls,
My second will destroy St. Paul's,
My whole on Temple-Bar was seen,
The day Prince Albert wed the Queen.
LAURA.
ANOTHER.
The earth did my first, and the sky did my second,
When the Census throughout the three kingdoms was reckoned,
When the sky does my first, and the earth does my whole,
My second will join the Equator and Pole.
SEMAJ.
A THIRD.
Miss Rose gave my first to my second (her lover),
My third made Miss Rose what you'll please to discover.
WOPS BORSHON.
REBUS.
An electrical agent, an over-ripe pear, a wooden leg, Mr. Dickens' best novel, half a dragon, a scapegrace, a young frog, an easy-chair, a French divine, a celebrated map, part of a lady's dress, a London club, and the sixth of a Knight of the Garter. The initials describe what the reader is, the finals what he may be if he likes, and the middle letter what he can never be, though his father was, and his child must be.
LILLY.
ANOTHER.
A man, a can, a fan, Ann, to scan, a plan—their equivalents represent the four elements in agitation, and spelt backwards, describe the most pleasing object in the Great Exhibition. Omitting Ann and the fan, the equivalents prophesy what theatre will next be burned down.
INGENIOUS MARY.
ARITHMETICAL PUZZLE.
I am engaged to a young lady, who will not tell me her age, but says that if I measure her arm (which is a very pretty one) above the elbow, and multiply the number of inches by the number of the Royal Family (in 1851), and then divide by the number of perfection, I shall discover her age. As I know a shorter way, I hand over the puzzle to my readers.
JUNIUS.
CONUNDRUMS.
I.
What is that which if you stamp upon it, appears above your head, and if you blow upon it, vanishes?
II.
Why is the late Lord Mayor like the Crystal Fountain?
III.
Why must John Knox have been the last man in the world to eat a lobster?
IV.
Why is the Earl of Zetland (the Grand Freemason of England), when he wears a waistcoat which his family think unbecoming to him, like a postage stamp from which the adhesive stuff has been licked off by a tortoiseshell kitten?
V.
If you went through the Lowther Arcade in company with the inventor of the Marine Telegraph, and saw an old lady's back hair coming down, why would you be obliged to ask him to tell her of it in Arabic or Chinese?
VI.
If Peeping Tom of Coventry were to put on the Bloomer Costume, and be carried in a sedan chair, by two black men, from the Marble Arch to the Menai Bridge, why would he resemble Mr. Macaulay, on a snowy day, and with an achromatic telescope in his left hand, taking shelter about eleven o'clock in a pastrycook's shop anywhere in the City?
DESDEMONA B.
ANAGRAMS.
Names of Politicians.|
Confidence shaken. Ah!
He made a mull.
Terms—give place.
Trusted, time past. Yes.
Names of Singers.|
O 'xtortionate.
Not worth salt.
Sick? O sans doubt
Envy, scoffs, vile O.
Names of Preachers.
White Brow in mirror.
Do come in Broughams.
More bigot. No.
Rantipole, he!
Names of Actresses.
Nice scented veil.
Who more smart?
Silly, him in Guards.
Neat in the calf.
SIPSEHT.
TRANSPOSITIONS.
I.
Transpose "Jos. Paxton, Knight, Gardener," and you may describe what he would have been if Mrs. Graham had smashed the transept with her balloon.
II.
A transposition of one of the Prince of Wales's titles will give the three prettiest Christian names for ladies.
III.
You may transpose a line in the second verse of the National Anthem, until you make something which Dr. Bull little dreamed of when composing it.
P. PILLICODDY.
FINAL BLAZE OF GLORY.
(Our own Riddle).
Take the year of the Plague, and the month of the Fire,
Take Phœbus-Apollo, with hand on his lyre,
Take a Jew's famous eye, and the eye of the Pope,
And a building where foolish young novices mope,
And a sprat (but alive), and the name of a town,
And a greenhorn by sharpers done awfully brown,
A tree without bark, and a play without plot,
And that isle where as yet Uncle Sam reigneth not,
Take a maid who's had warning, a gun without powder,
The word that makes Englishmen prouder and prouder,
Pick from each but one letter—it lies in the middle,
You'll find what you'll be when you find out this riddle.