(The following owes a debt to The National Puzzler’s League: The First 115 Years and “Early American Word Puzzles,” a multi-part Will Shortz contribution to Word Ways from the 1970s. I’ve added some independent research, as I will in later installments.)
The American puzzle tradition, begun in 1647, resumed in Samuel Cheever's An Almanack for the Year of Our Lord 1660, also in Massachusetts. Cheever, like Samuel Danforth before him, wrote a poem for each month, but he leaned more toward classical allusion than the texture of colonial life.
Faire Tellus now (whom in her tripping pace
Lord AEolus t'unmaske her lovely face,
With charming suits, and plaints could' ne're perswade
Nor yet by force constraine, though h'oft assay'd)
No sooner cornes to Titan in's attire
But that his rayes setting her heart on fire
The sparkling flames her rosy cheekes soon scale
Where causing sweat, shee quickly doffs her veile.
Like Danforth’s January poem, this March poem relates to temperatures—in this case, to their thawing. But to get it, you might need to know “Tellus” means Earth, Aeolus was a god of winds, and the Titan is Hyperion, god of the sun.
Also like Danforth, Cheever followed up his poems with a more interlinked second set, sticking to the same mythological vein. Here’s March from the Almanack 1661:
The bright Parelion, whose spurious rayes
The wond’ring world so strangely did amaze
(During whole course, poor Tellus was aress’d(?)
At such high rates, the vapours from her press’d,
The fumes by taxes rais’d, and custome due
His splendour to maintain, were not a few)
Did disappear, and sparkling Sol again
Was in his throne, with all his glitt’ring train.
The third American riddlist was William Brattle in An Ephemeris of Coelestial Motions, Aspects, Eclipses, &c. For the Year of the Christian Era 1682. Brattle would become a Cambridge pastor and publish a system of logic in the Cartesian tradition; he wrote the almanac when he was 19 or 20. Its riddles are more like modern language-play:
Hundreds of Apes all most everywhere
Will now appear with wings flying in the Air,
Who will be bravely Arm'd with such a Spear,
That th' Stoutest men them far to Vex will fear,
But (Friends) Fear not, this news it doth portend
No harm at all, but sweet things in the End.
The in-joke here relies on knowledge of Latin, common enough in those days. “Apes” is the plural of the latin “apis,” which means “bee.”
Half a century later, in 1736’s Poor Richard’s Almanack, Benjamin Franklin alarmed his audience with a somewhat similar prediction:
Not long after (the middle of the Year), a visible Army of 20000 Musketers will land, some in Virginia & Maryland, and some in the lower Counties on both sides of Delaware, who will over-run the Country, and sorely annoy the Inhabitants. But the Air in this Climate will agree with them so ill toward Winter, that they will die in the beginning of cold weather like rotten Sheep, and by Christmas the Inhabitants will get the better of them.
Prophecy of the Revolutionary War? Early version of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds? Neither:
The Army which it was said would land in Virginia, Maryland, and the Lower Counties on Delaware were not Musketers with Guns on their Shoulders as some expected; but their Namesakes in Pronunciation, tho truly spelt Moschitos, armed only with a sharp Sting. Everyone knows they are Fish before they fly, being bred in the Water; and therefore may properly be said to land before they become generally troublesome.
Tomorrow: pre-Revolutionary periodical puzzling.