My second is double my first,
 My first is but half of my second;
 And I’m sure you’ll admit that my whole
 Is ten times the latter when reckon’d.

Solution

298

My first I went the other day,
 And pretty surely reckon’d
 A basket of fine fish to catch,
 With hook and rod and second.
But I was out in reckoning;
 A very pretty she
 Of her fair face show’d just my whole—
 And pretty soon hook’d me.

Solution

299

Of mirth the parent, though the child of art,
 A stranger to myself in every part;
 Each India has a native in my breast,
 The West my sweetness, and my fire the East.
 While milder climes my virtue to complete,
 Quicken my softness, and correct my heat;
 My dearest friends upon my vitals prey,
 And as they see me sinking, grow more gay.

Solution

300. A FLIGHT OF FANCY

When my whole takes a flight in the air you will find
 That my next is not left a great distance behind;
 But join them together, and plain to your view
 It all is as firm and as tight as a screw.

Solution

301

To three-fourths of a cross, add a circle complete;
 Then, let two semi-circles a perpendicular meet;
 Next, add a triangle that stands on two feet;
 Then, two semi-circles, and a circle complete.

Solution

302. A CHARADE

Leader of Vandals and of vice
 My head is reckoned;
 A Turkish captain will suffice
 To be my second.
 My third is firm if well selected;
 My whole a wanderer neglected.

Solution

303

One thousand, two hundred,
 Nothing, and one,
 Transposed, give a word
 Expressive of fun.

Solution

304. A CHARADE
By Praed

My first was creeping on his way
 Through the mists of a dull October day,
 When a minstrel came to its muddy bed,
 With a harp on his shoulder, a wreath on his head;
 “And how shall I reach,” the poor boy cried,
 “To the courts and the cloisters on t’other side?”
Old Euclid came, and he frown’d a frown,
 And he dash’d the harp and the garland down;
 Then he led the bard, with a stately march,
 O’er my second’s long and cellar’d arch;—
 “And see,” said the sage, “how every ass
 Over the sacred stream must pass!”
The youth was mournful, the youth was mute,
 He sigh’d for his laurel, he sobb’d for his lute;—
 The youth took comfort, the youth took snuff,
 And follow’d the lead of that teacher gruff;
 And he sits, ever since, in my whole’s kind lap,
 In a silken gown and a trencher cap.

Solution

305

Upright and honest is my first;
 My second you may see
 Upon the frozen lake or stream;
 My whole is equity.

Solution

306

Never wearied, see us stand,
 A glittering and a stately band—
 Of sturdy stuff, but graceful form,
 In summer cold, in winter warm;
 From hottest duty never swerving,
 Night and day our place preserving;
 Each serving to a different use,
 Not to be changed without abuse.
 And, pray, mark well another fact—
 In unison we never act,
 Except, as on occasion dread,
 We watch the ashes of the dead;
 When we are ranged, as you may see
 As awful sentries, one, two, three.

Solution

307. A CHARADE

My first, though naught, with others is a fruit,
 My next is vital to both man and brute.
 It should be dear to all who hate the devil,
 For it is ever the reverse of evil.
 My all, when whole, is eloquent of peace,
 Divided it invokes to life that will not cease.

Solution

308. A CHARADE
In English Sapphics

Guess at my first, ’tis easy to discover,
 Covered with rings, and whiskered like a dandy.
 Wrapped up in furs, ’tis often on the housetop,
 Oft in the chimney!
See where my second, scorning to be hidden,
 Stands at the head of quite a band of others,
 Like a virago, straddling with feet apart,
 And arms akimbo.
Surely my next is happy in its office,
 Parting the lovelocks on Neæra’s forehead;
 Setting the golden lines wherewith she angles
 For the unwary.
If by my whole at any time you pass, you
 Tread on the dust of holy saints and martyrs,
 Holy the place, may holy thoughts attend you,
 Peacefully dreaming!

Solution

309

Offspring of nature and of art, I stand
 Chief ’midst the monuments of every land;
 I may not lengthen life, but I
 For centuries forbid to die.
 The greatest truth in me you meet
 Is but deception most complete.
 Unchanged I last the changing crowds among,
 And as I older grow, I grow too young.

Solution

310

Pronounced as one letter, and written with three,
 Two letters there are, and two only in me;
 I’m double, I’m single, I’m black, blue, and gray,
 I’m read from both ends, and the same either way.

Solution

311

My first is false as false can be;
 My next old ladies wear;
 My whole’s my first, as you will see,
 As false, I do declare.

Solution

312. SHUFFLED LETTERS

When whole I am indeed a thing
 To puzzle you a bit;
 Though parts of me are hard, at Bridge
 The others make a hit;
 Or you may make a car of some,
 And fix a head to it.

Solution

313. FIVE VOWELS

A word of nine letters explains
 How to mitigate bodily pains;
 The five vowels are there,
 And four consonants share
 This function for medical brains.

Solution

314. A CHARADE

My second guides my first and third
 For pleasure, trade, and war;
 My first and second by my third
 Are oft transported far.
 But when my first my third doth pull,
 ’Tis then his lot is worst;
 And should my second lack my whole,
 He’s apt to leave my first.

Solution

315. MISSING WORDS

It is a ...... fact that neither ...... nor ...... grow .. .....

Solution

316. THE BONES OF A PALINDROME

DRWNDRRDNWRD.

Insert the missing letters, and so form a perfect palindrome, which reads alike from either end.

Solution

317

The schoolboy likes me well,
 For healthful sport I bring,
 Yet I can harm create,
 Though such a little thing:
 Connubial bliss is form’d by me;
 My nature is equality.

Solution

318. A RIDDLE

What person’s name is doubly evil?
The answer may be given in a line that rhymes.

Solution

319

I’m a district near London;
 If made wrong, I come undone;
 O’er sweet strings I swift run,
 Or appear with the bright sun,
 And though by me fights were won,
 I can greet you every one.

Solution

320. A CHARADE

I am my first when seen with you,
 My next is always bad.
 A rogue in grain much harm may do
 And make the farmer mad.

Solution

321. A CHARADE

When winter comes with frost and cold,
 My first is welcome, as of old;
 And though its grip may make you thinner,
 It helps to cook your Christmas dinner.
Let me but hear my next rejoice
 At early dawn with cheerful voice,
 I haste to find, with eager pleasure,
 Some specimen of hidden treasure.
A traveller my whole may find
 Far from his English kith and kind;
 Though some at home, to England’s shame,
 Are this in fact, if not in name.

Solution

322.

It was to-morrow, and
 It will be yesterday;
 Now it is near at hand
 What is it? Who can say?

Solution

323. A CHARADE

My first doth fill with light his father’s eyes,
 The second shadows all the mother’s brow;
 My whole all men, all women, girls and boys,
 Have had, and long to lose, and lost for ever now;
 But know not, nor can know, when it was lost, and how.

Solution

324. ON THE BLOCK

Complete, though not of human race,
 A soul in me may dwell;
 Behead, I held a higher place,
 Until, like man, I fell.

Again behead, and in the song
 Of Burns I’m all your own;
 Behead once more, it would be wrong
 To find me out when known.

Solution

325. AN ENIGMA

With head good for naught,
 And with tail always drunk,
 You know well what to say
 Of the worth of my trunk.
 First cut off my tail,
 I am Greek, and I’m not;
 Then cut off my head,
 And some Latin you’ve got.
 Lopping both you know best
 What remains, as I said,
 For I really am you
 If I lose tail and head!

Solution

326. AN ENIGMA

One guiding eye I need
 In running through the gaps;
 My tail, as on I speed,
 Is caught in many traps.

Solution

327. A CHESS CHARADE
By H. J. C. Andrews

In the ’seventies no one was more popular at Simpson’s Chess Room in the Strand than the gentle and brilliant subject of these lines, a clever water-colourist. The charade is by his friend, the well-known problem composer. Both have passed away, but they are not forgotten by those who had the happiness to know them:—

Of all the birds that ever sought a mate,
 My first is to but one appropriate,
 So speak the word! nor silence shyly woo.
 To find my next, go! wander in the Zoo!
 My whole is a magician of the squares,
 But Art, with Chess, his best affections shares,
 So this, indeed, to him may be a law
 When winning’s hopeless, grandly still to draw.

Solution

328. WHAT AM I?

Though poor and humble was my birth
 I sit enthroned on high;
 My footsteps far above the earth,
 My canopy the sky.
O’er toiling subjects thus in state
 I bear despotic sway;
 Yet on them hand and foot I wait
 At break and close of day.

Solution

329.

I am not of flesh and blood,
 Yet have I many a bone;
 No limbs, except one leg,
 And can’t stand on that alone.
My friends are many, and dwell
 In all lands of the human race;
 But they poke my poor nose into the mud,
 And shamefully spatter my face.
Thrust me into each other’s ribs,
 Stick me in gutter and rut;
 I have never a window, and never a door,
 Yet I often open and shut.

Solution

330. AN ENIGMA

Before the crown descended on
 The head of England’s Queen,
 Four Kings upon that royal throne
 Of the same name had been.
 Now if the signs which marked their name
 Be joined unto a beast,
 We have a food on which the same
 (A quadruped) will feast.

Solution

331. AN OLD ENIGMA
By Charles James Fox

I am pretty, and useful in various ways,
 Though I tempt some poor mortals to shorten their days;
 Behead me, and then in my place will appear
 What youngsters admire every day in the year;
 Behead me once more, and without any doubt,
 You must be what is left if you don’t find it out.

Solution

332. A CHARADE

My first, when skilfully performed
 (Its doer by applauses warmed),
 Bespeaks both skill and vigour.
 When with my whole, so soft and light,
 I saw my second gay bedight,
 She made a splendid figure.

Solution

333. MISSING WORDS

The man who ..... the common .....
 Above the ..... chaste,
 ..... as he may, the world declares
 Is not a man of taste.
 And though my sympathy he shares,
 No ..... on him I waste!

Solution

334. A CHARADE

When a monk in old times, unexpectedly heated,
 Endangered the peace of his soul,
 To atone for my second my first he repeated
 Quite ten times a day on my whole.

Solution

335. AN ENIGMA

An insect small and fell
 Makes a weird sound,
 If, as its name you spell,
 You turn it round.
One letter cast, and still
 Shift what remains,
 Another insect will
 Reward your pains.

Solution

336. A DECAPITATION

Where head and body duly meet
 I am as slender as a bee;
 Whether I stand on head or feet
 My figure shows its symmetry.
But when my head is cut away
 The metamorphosis is strange;
 Though both of them unaltered stay,
 Body and head to nothing change.

Solution

337. A NUT TO CRACK

First is in coast, second in ghost,
 Third must be reckoned part of second;
 Fourth in boat, fifth in float,
 Sixth you will find within your mind.
 Seventh in blue, eighth in true,
 These letters tell a fruit that they spell.

Solution

338.

The hunter and his steed are known
 My first to see.
 Though men may call my next a stone,
 Wood it may be.
 My whole, an exile from his home,
 Is doomed from place to place to roam.

Solution

339. A CHARADE

My first expresses power to do,
 My next that it is done.
 To be my whole belongs to few,
 And perfectly to none.

Solution

340. A CHARADE

In my first, as in a shell,
 All the sweetest sounds may dwell;
 In my second, shells abound
 That can catch no sort of sound;
 In my whole securely rest
 Those who neither jeer nor jest.

Solution

341. A CHARADE

My first, though of the feathered kind
 Is never known to fly;
 My next all who improve their mind
 Seize as it passes by.
 My whole may much occasion find
 To make the truthful lie.

Solution

342. AN ENIGMA

Divide a piece of beef or pork
 Without the aid of knife and fork;
 It gives a shelf, rejoined with skill,
 Where you may set this if you will.
 Strike off instead the end, its place
 Is plain as nose upon your face.
 Cut this asunder in your mind,
 And what is first put now behind;
 Part of our foot you thus discover,
 And in a measure all is over.

Solution

343. A CHARADE

Seen as a whole, my form is now
 Akin to strife and malice;
 Split, it may grace a princely brow,
 Or crown the curls of Alice.
Recast my letters, and I tell
 That nourishment is lacking;
 Stir them afresh until they spell
 The needle’s help in tacking.

Solution

344. AN ENIGMA

If I write with my first in my second
 My whole you can never find out;
 Add a letter, and all will be reckoned
 A patron of water devout.

Solution

345. WHAT DID THE COLONEL SAY?

After officers’ mess, when cigars were well alight, the old conundrum was propounded, “What is most like a cornet of horse?” A sharp sub. was ready with the reply, “A hornet, of course”; it was presently capped by this variant which occurred to a married captain, “a corset of horn”; and yet another reading was suggested by the deaf old colonel, “How much did you say the ..............” Can you complete this?

Solution

346. WHERE WAS IT?

Loss of love between us
 Never can be nice;
 Yet we live where Venus
 Changes us to ice.

Solution

347. A LOVER TO HIS LASS

Tell me, my sweet,
 Why are your feet
 Like fairy tales?

Solution

348. MISSING WORDS

Our parson ....... every man who has leisure
 To study ....... windows, the glory of fanes;
 And ....... of devoting his income to pleasure,
 Our ....... old dean spends his money on panes.

Solution

349. AN EASY ONE

Though much attached to merriment,
 Or crime for a variety,
 To prison I am never sent,
 But sparkle in society.

Solution

350. A CHARADE

Without my first and second’s aid
 No pudding worth its sauce is made.
 Take on my third, my fourth I am,
 My fifth includes myself and Sam.
 My whole describes the royal fiddler Nero,
 And shows him as an unheroic hero.

Solution

351. BURIED PLACES

What geographical names are buried in these lines?

He has my R. N. as a monogram
I am her stupid sister.
The calmest man is sometimes made irate.

Solution

352.