I have come across the following little poser in an old book. I wonder how many readers will see the author's intended solution to the riddle.
Christians the week's first day for Sabbath hold;
The Jews the seventh, as they did of old;
The Turks the sixth, as we have oft been told.
How can these three, in the same place and day,
Have each his own true Sabbath? tell, I pray.
The annals of Scotland Yard contain some remarkable cases of jewel robberies, but one of the most perplexing was the theft of Lady Littlewood's rubies. There have, of course, been many greater robberies in point of value, but few so artfully conceived. Lady Littlewood, of Romley Manor, had a beautiful but rather eccentric heirloom in the form of a ruby brooch. While staying at her town house early in the eighties she took the jewel to a shop in Brompton for some slight repairs.
"A fine collection of rubies, madam," said the shopkeeper, to whom her ladyship was a stranger.
"Yes," she replied; "but curiously enough I have never actually counted them. My mother once pointed out to me that if you start from the centre and count up one line, along the outside and down the next line, there are always eight rubies. So I should always know if a stone were missing."
Six months later a brother of Lady Littlewood's, who had returned from his regiment in India, noticed that his sister was wearing the ruby brooch one night at a county ball, and on their return home asked to look at it more closely. He immediately detected the fact that four of the stones were gone.