Sam Loyd claimed to have sold “one thousand million” of these puzzles in the late 1800s, but the solution requires an insight that most solvers overlooked.
“Cut out the six pieces very carefully, then try to arrange them to make the best possible figure of a horse. That is all there is to it, but the entire world laughed for a year over the many grotesque representations of a horse that can be made with those six pieces.”
Now, sir, your coat is off!
And see–
Your right-hand pocketed!
So let it be:
While o’er your arm
An endless string–
Some three yards round–
Hangs like a sling.
Take the string off–
But, just for fun,
It must be done
Keeping your right-hand in its place,
And not a smile must stir your face.
Until you find this puzzle out,
No coat shall wrap your back about.
How is it to be done?
From Don Lemon, Everybody’s Illustrated Book of Puzzles, 1890:
Twice six are eight of us,
Six are but three of us,
Nine are but four of us,
What can we possibly be?Would you know more of us?
I’ll tell you more of us.
Twelve are but six of us,
Five are but four of us, now do you see?
A man eats breakfast at his camp, then travels due south. After going 10 miles in a straight line he stops for lunch. Then he sets out again due south. After going 10 miles in a straight line he finds himself back at camp. Where is he?
Let the rich, great, and noble banquet in the festal halls,
And pass the hours away, as the most thoughtless revel;
Then seek the poor man’s dreary home, whose very dingy walls
Proclaim full well to all how low his rank and level.
“Take away one letter from a word in the above stanza, and substitute another, leaving the word so metamorphosed still a word of the English language; and, by that change, totally alter the syntactical construction of the whole sentence, changing the moods and tenses of verbs, turning verbs into nouns, nouns into adjectives, and adjectives into adverbs, &c., and so make the entire stanza bear quite a different meaning from that which it has as it stands above.”
Which statements on this list are true?
Two problems that will make you want to throw a chair at someone, from John Jackson, Rational Amusements for Winter Evenings, 1821:
I.
If from six ye take nine, and from nine ye take ten
(Ye youths, now the mystery explain;)
And if fifty from forty be taken, there then,
Shall just half a dozen remain.
II.
One third of twelve, if you divide,
By just one fifth of seven,
The true result (it has been tried,)
Exactly is eleven.
How? Why?
By Charles Tomlinson. White to play and mate in 4 moves, giving check on every move and forcing Black to do the same.
A (probably apocryphal) story tells that, as a 10-year-old schoolboy, Carl Friedrich Gauss was asked to find the sum of the first 100 integers. The tyrannical schoolmaster, who had intended this task to occupy the boy for some time, was astonished when Gauss presented the correct answer, 5050, almost immediately.
How did Gauss find it?
