The Canterbury Puzzles, and Other Curious Problems

by Henry Ernest Dudeney

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 Adam," to which his consort replied with the modest palindrome "Eve."

Then we have Arithmetical Puzzles, an immense class, full of diversity. These range from the puzzle that the algebraist finds to be nothing but a "simple equation," quite easy of direct solution, up to the profoundest problems in the elegant domain of the theory of numbers.

Next we have the Geometrical Puzzle, a favourite and very ancient branch of which is the puzzle in dissection, requiring some plane figure to be cut into a certain number of pieces that will fit together and form another figure. Most of the wire puzzles sold in the streets and toy-shops are concerned with the geometry of position.

But these classes do not nearly embrace all kinds of puzzles even when we allow for those that belong at once to several of the classes. There are many ingenious mechanical puzzles that you cannot classify, as they stand quite alone: there are puzzles in logic, in chess, in draughts, in cards, and in dominoes, while every conjuring trick is nothing but a puzzle, the solution to which the performer tries to keep to himself.