"This is quite different," he said, "from the others. The worst of it is that after laboring ever so hard at one riddle it does not in the least lead to another. The next is always on some other principle."
"Yes, to be sure," said Lucy. "Nobody who knows how to puzzle would give two riddles of the same kind; that would be too easy."
"But then, without something to guide one," said Harry, "there is no getting on."
"Not in your regular way," said Lucy.
"That is the very thing I complain of," said Harry.
"Complain! But my dear Harry, riddles are meant only to divert one."
"But they do not divert me," said Harry; "they only puzzle me."
The Gentle Reader is inclined to impute unworthy motives to the writer whose work merely puzzles him.
"The lazy unscrupulous fellow takes a job, and then throws it up and leaves me to finish it for him. It's a clear breach of contract! That sort of thing would never have been allowed in any well-governed community. Fancy what would have happened in the court of Shahriar, where story-telling was taken seriously."
Sheherazade has got Sindbad on the moving island.