The Ben Franklin riddle mentioned yesterday was one of three “Enigmatical Prophecies” in the volume, “which they that do not understand, cannot well explain.” Here are the other two riddles, followed by their answers:
1. Before the middle of this year, a wind at N. East will arise, during which the water of the sea and rivers will be in such a manner raised, that great part of the towns of Boston, Newport, New-York, Philadelphia, the low lands of Maryland and Virginia, and the town of Charlstown in South Carolina, will be under water. Happy will it be for the sugar and salt, standing in the cellars of those places, if there be tight roofs and cielings overhead; otherwise, without being a conjurer, a man may easily foretel that such commodities will receive damage.
[Answer:] The water of the sea and rivers is raised in vapours by the sun, is form’d into clouds in the air, and thence descends in rain. Now when there is rain overhead, (which frequently happens when the wind is at N. E.) the cities and places on the earth below, are certainly under water.
2. About the middle of the year, great numbers of vessels fully laden will be taken out of the ports aforesaid, by a Power with which we are not now at war, and whose forces shall not be descried or seen either coming or going. But in the end this may not be disadvantageous to those places.
[Answer:] The power…is the Wind, whose forces also are not descried either coming or going.
Franklin’s readers had to wait a full year between almanac editions to receive these answers.
Newspapers proliferated in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, but they didn’t latch onto puzzle features with any great eagerness. The first American paper to dabble in them was William Zenger’s New-York Weekly Journal in 1741, reprinting material from a British West Indies paper:
I am a bitter, but a wholesome good
Were but my virtues better understood;
For many things impossible to thought,
Have been by me to full Perfection brought,
The daring of the soul proceeds from me,
With prudence, diligence, activity,
Sharpness of Wit and fortitude I give,
And teach the patient Man to better live,
When Men, once strange to me, my virtues prove,
Themselves I make them know and him above.
The flatt'rer from the friend I give to know;
In me a fair possession lies, but (oh!
The Childishness of men) all me refuse.
Because I’m plain, and gaudy trifles chuse.
I'm made the scorn of ev' ry soppish fool,
Insulted, hated, turn’d to ridicule.
The answer, printed below the riddle, was “poverty.”
While I doubt modern protestors of economic inequality would agree with that sentiment, it might have appealed to Zenger, who knew a little something about what you learn from having nothing. He’s most famous today for being jailed, then released in a seminal freedom-of-the-press trial.
However he felt about it, casual entertainment like riddles and other puzzles didn’t become a regular thing in his newspaper, or in most papers of the day.
Magazines were a different story. More on that Thursday, after the next micross comes to town!