Eighteenth-Century British Puzzling
Diversions from earlier days.
Word Ways #6.3 (1973) is one of the best single issues of the publication I’ve examined so far. It’s tough to pick highlights, but I gotta cite “British Word Puzzles” (1700-1800) by William F. Shortz. A “too long, didn’t read” summary with context lies below.
Many wordplay fans know that Shortz pursued a degree in enigmatology, trained to be a lawyer, then skipped the bar and got right into a puzzling career instead. What’s less well known is that he contributed more than his share to the store of common knowledge as a puzzling historian. He filled in many gaps of knowledge in his capacities as Games Magazine’s editor and Word Ways contributor.
A rebirth of popularity in enigmas and word-play occurred in Europe during the Renaissance period. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, numerous collections of riddle s and word puzzles were published, including Demaundes Joyous (1511), A Little Book of Riddles (1540), The Booke of Merry Riddles (prior to 1575, and mentioned in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor), Wit's Academy (1656), and many others. Men of all walks of life riddled and puzzled during idle hours.
Even by the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, very few types of puzzles were in existence. Most popular were riddles and enigmas, which men had been making and solving since antiquity. Anagramming had come into vogue during the 1600s, and the making of acrostics had been practiced for many years. But besides these elementary puzzle forms, almost no other types were known.
Shortz notes that the main puzzle types coming into fashion in the 1700s were the enigma, charade, acrostic, and beheadment.
An enigma is a metaphorical description that we’d consider a kind of riddle today. Here’s an early example from 1711, in the immodestly titled magazine Delights for the Ingenious:
In young and old I do excite
Painful Sensations, and Delight.
All Men me as their Servant prize;
But when I rule, I tyrannize:
I can be seen, and heard, and smelt,
Yea, more, I’m at a distance felt,
I’m never bought nor sold; but yet,
I am maintain' d with Charges great.
There’s but one Death in Nature found
For me, and that is to be drown’d.
The answer is “fire.”
A charade, as in a cryptic crossword, consists of adding a number of smaller words together to get a big word or phrase. Charades in this format could be alphabetical or pronunciation-based: in modern English, you could add HEN, RYE, and VERY to get the name of the pirate HENRY EVERY, or HEN, READ, and AVIS to get the baseball catcher HENRY DAVIS. One would have to guess each piece of the puzzle from clues like “Mate of the cock” (HEN) or “Neither white nor wheat” (RYE).
Acrostic puzzles, in the eighteenth-century context, are neither the modern kind of acrostic puzzle described here nor the poetic form discussed here, but they’re closer to the second type. From clues, one must guess a series of words, then use their initials to spell the final answer—the example given is GRAVE, RING, EVENING, EASE, and NO, spelling out GREEN.
Beheadments are puzzles wherein you must guess a pair or trio of words—the second word is the first word minus its first letter, and if there’s a third word, it’s a similar “beheadment” of the second. Shortz provides the example of GLASS, LASS, and ASS, which would probably raise more eyebrows today than it did then.
Tomorrow: VOTE. (If you haven’t already.)