THE CANTERBURY PUZZLES
with the blowe, and had presently slain him upon the place had he
not been stayed by his brother Robert.
" Hereupon they presently went to horse, and their spurres
claimed so good haste as they recovered Pontoise, albeit they were
sharply pursued by the French.'*
Now, tradition—on this point not "trustworthy—says that the
chessboard broke into the thirteen fragments shown in our illustra-
tion. It will be seen that there are twelve pieces, all different in
shape, each containing five squares, and one little piece of four
squares only.
We thus have all the sixty-four squares of the chessboard, and
the puzzle is simply to cut them out and fit them together, so as to
make a perfect board properly chequered. The pieces may be
easily cut out of a sheet of
4<
squared" paper, and, if mounted on
cardboard, they will form a source of perpetual amusement in the
home.
If you succeed in constructing the chessboard, but do not record
the arrangement, you will find it just as puzzling the next time you
feel disposed to attack it.
Prince Henry himself, with all his skill and learning, would have
found it an amusing pastime.
75.—The Spider and the Fly.
Inside a rectangular room, measuring 30 feet in length and
12 feet in width and height, a spider is at a point on the middle of
one of the end walls, 1 foot
f^v^
T\A from the ceiling, as at A,
and a fly is on the opposite
wall, 1 foot from the floor in
the centre, as shown at B.
What is the shortest distance
30 -ft.
that the spider must crawl in
order to reach the fly, which
remains stationary
?
Of course the spider never drops or uses its
web, but crawls fairly.
92
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