INTRODUCTION
anagrams, charades, and that sort of thing, but to puzzles that
contain an original idea. Well, you cannot invent a good puzzle to
order, any more than you can invent anything else in that manner.
Notions for puzzles come at strange times and in strange ways.
They are suggested by something we see or hear, and are led up to
by other puzzles that come under our notice. It is useless to say,
" I will sit down and invent an original puzzle," because there is no
way of creating an idea—you can only make use of it when it comes.
You may think this is wrong, because an expert in these things will
make scores of puzzles while another person, equally clever, cannot
invent one " to save his life," as we say. The explanation is very
simple. The expert knows an idea when he sees one, and is able
by long experience to judge of its value. Fertility, like facility, comes
by practice.
Sometimes a new and most interesting idea is suggested by the
blunder of somebody over another puzzle. A boy was given a
puzzle to solve by a friend, but he misunderstood what he had to do,
and set about attempting what most likely everybody would have
told him was impossible. But he was a boy with a will, and he
stuck at it for six months, off and on, until he actually succeeded.
When his friend saw the solution, he said, " This is not the puzzle I
intended—you misunderstood me—but you have found out some-
thing much greater ! " And the puzzle which that boy accidentally
discovered is now in all the old puzzle books.
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
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