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Pictured Puzzles and Word Play / A Companion to the Twentieth Century Standard Puzzle Book cover

Pictured Puzzles and Word Play / A Companion to the Twentieth Century Standard Puzzle Book

Chapter 490: 358. WHAT IS IT?
By A. Cyril Pearson
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About This Book

A lively compendium of illustrated puzzles and verbal amusements, organized into pictured puzzles, word-play (including anagrams, charades, enigmas, and riddles), and a miscellany of odds and ends, each followed by complete solutions. It pairs visual problems—magic squares, tessellated and domino designs, and geometric dissections—with linguistic challenges that test anagramming, cryptic clues, and witty charades, and includes numerical recreations linking chess and arithmetic. Diagrams and step-by-step answers support independent solving and practical learning.

My first’s a fruit of foreign clime,
 Sweet to the taste, in price not dear;
 My second does my first produce,
 And yet my whole my first doth bear.

Solution

353. AN ENIGMA

A thing of beauty, scattered by a breath,
 My firm embrace is harbinger of death;
 Not made by hands, a work of wondrous art,
 Complete and perfected in every part;
 Crush me to-day with all-determined care,
 Then look to-morrow, and I shall be there!

Solution

354. AN ENIGMA

Six letters in my name are found,
 Though only three we see and sound;
 The shepherd by the running river
 May hear me where the rushes quiver;
 And should a stroke my whole divide,
 Leaving but half on either side,
 These, backward read, will surely tell
 What many a toper loves too well.

Solution

355. A RIDDLE

Upon a battle-field of learned men
 Hundred and fifty were by none divided.
 “Now,” said the bishop, “add two-thirds of ten
 And so you’ll guess the riddle just as I did.”

Solution

356.

Though the stations of mortals are many
 And the last is the head of his race;
 Yet he, just as often as any,
 Is won by my first’s fell embrace;
 Yet we most of us apt are to fall,
 When our heads cease our hearts to control,
 Let us hope that not one of us all
 May be e’er in the state of my whole.

Solution

357. WHAT IS IT?

My whole is no matter,
 And light as the air,
 Yet it is good on the platter,
 And excellent fare.
 Curtail and transpose,
 And a lady you see,
 Who will flatter and pose,
 And with many do me.

Solution

358. WHAT IS IT?

My first, for ages out of mind,
 All men have always worn behind;
 And yet alike by sea and land
 They carry it upon their hand.
 My second, carefully matured,
 Is never ill but often cured.
 My whole, within unchanging lines
 Black men and white alike confines.

Solution

359. WHAT IS THIS?

“We westand fall.”

Solution

360. A CHARADE

My second is pressed tightly round
 To guard from any ill;
 And when preparing to engage,
 Men find it useful still.
 My first against attraction set
 Will neutralise its power;
 Aided by it, with bargains, some
 May spend a happy hour.
 You find my whole by careful search
 Which must not be forsaken;
 It stands before what comes beyond,
 Which may from it be taken.

Solution

361. A GOOD ANAGRAM

George Thompson, the zealous anti-slavery advocate, was asked to go into Parliament, the better to press his point and cause. When he hesitated a friend produced, as a conclusive reason, this anagram, spelt with the letters of his name—“O go, the negro’s M.P.!”

362. WHAT AM I?

Scorned by the meek and humble mind,
 And often by the vain possessed,
 Heard by the deaf, seen by the blind,
 I give the troubled spirit rest.

Solution