Page:Cyclopedia of Puzzles by Samuel Loyd.pdf/38

"As showing how valuable knowledge, improving to the mind, may be learned from incidents which may occur to a gentleman of leisure during a summer's outing," murmured Weary Willie, during one of his reminiscent moods, "I recall a chance meeting with Tired Tim on an urban branch of the D. L. & W. We exchanged the sign, password and fraternal grip and became acquaint- ed at once. It appeared that a change from Joytown air was recommended for him at the same time that I was persuaded that it would be better for my health to leave Pleasantville. That is how we came to meet at a point ten miles on the road."

"We fraternized just long enough to become chummy and swap diaries according to rule and then jogged on to our different destinations.

"Both towns proved to be overworked, and secret association marks showed the people to be so mercenary and uncongenial that it would be waste of time to tarry.

"Accepting the escort of the attentive policeman who invariably recommended traveling gentlemen to return by the same route to where they came from, we started as it appears, simultaneously on our return trips.

"That is why, as shown in the sketch, that I again met my erstwhile acquaintance, at a point twelve miles from Pleasantville, but I'll go you the beers that from the data given you can't figure out how many miles it is from Toytown to Pleasantville."

Of course, it is assumed that each of the pedestrians maintained his own respective gait, both in going and coming from one town to another.

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A Pictorial Charade

When I was traveling through Puzzle Land, where every sign is a puzzle, every question a riddle, and you must guess the name of everything you eat, I saw this sign over a livery stable. Can you tell me what it meant?

A PROBLEM FOR A JURY.

JUDGES are sometimes called upon to solve knotty points of law, which would bother the average puzzlist. Here for example is an old-timer which, so far as I am aware, has never been answered satisfactorily:

Polus instructed Ctesiphon in the art of pleading, and it was agreed between teacher and pupil that the tuition fee should be paid when the latter should win his first case. Some time having passed by, and the young man being without clients and evincing no ambition to secure business, Polus, in despair, brought the matter before the court. Each party pleaded his own case, and Polus, speaking first, said: "It is indifferent to me how the Court may decide this matter, for, if the decision be In my favor, I recover my fee by virtue of the judgment; but, if my opponent wins the case, it being his first, I obtain my fee according to contract.

Ctesiphon, who was evidently an apt scholar, replied: "The decision of the Court is even of less importance to me, for if the verdict is in my favor I am thereby released from my debt to Polus. But if I loose the case, the fee cannot be demanded according to the contract."

A still more interesting case is said of a certain king who built a bridge and decreed that all persons about to cross it should be interrogated as to their destination. If they told the truth they were permitted to pass unharmed, but if they answered falsely they were to be hanged on a gallows erected at the centre of the bridge. One day a man about to cross was asked the usual question, and replied: "I am going to be hanged on that gallows!"

Now, if they hanged him, he had told the truth and should have escaped, whereas if they did not hang him, he had answered falsely and should have swung for it.

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A Rebus

My first's possessed by all mankind,
My second skims the wave;
My whole will dash through wave
and wind.
In hopes my first to save.

Cipher Answer.—12, 9, 6, 5, 2, 15, 1, 20.

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