By J. Marie Croft, author of Conundrums & Coincidences
In bygone days, ladies and gentlemen of leisure whiled away their indoor hours with genteel pursuits—conversation, reading, cards, music, dancing, etc. Another popular way to occupy one’s time and amuse others was to participate in group ‘parlour games’.
Diversions like ‘Buffy Gruffy’ or ‘Blind Man’s Buff’ required no special equipment other than a blindfold and/or a forbearance for being laughed at. For those persons drawn to the ridiculous, the risky, or the risqué, there was floury ‘Bullet Pudding’, flaming ‘Snapdragon’, or indecorous kissing games. Cumulative scores weren’t typically kept nor was a duration set. Play simply continued until participants decided they’d had quite enough of being made sport of by their neighbours and laughing at them in turn.
Laughter, however, was not permitted in ‘Pinch Without Laughing’, a Victorian game in which participants tweaked the nose of the person seated next to them. Victims who smiled or laughed incurred a penalty. The following quote is from The Book of Parlour Games (1854):
“Of course the most strenuous exertions are made by the operators to cause him to lose his gravity. We have heard of some designing persons in this game blacking the tips of their finger and thumb with burnt cork, which leaves a very agreeable impression on the pinched nose. If two or three unsuspecting individuals happen to be victimised in this way, they laugh heartily at each other, neither suspecting that he is an object of equal ridicule, which is not only a fine moral lesson, but also leads to the great accumulation of forfeits.”
In one form or another, ‘Truth or Dare’ has been around for centuries. In a 1711 issue of The Spectator, Joseph Addison included ‘Questions and Commands’ among a list of innocent amusements for a winter’s night. In that game, a ‘commander’ would ask a question and bid his or her subjects to answer truthfully. If someone refused to respond or failed to satisfy, they, at the commander’s order, had to perform some elaborate or outrageous act as a penalty. The game could cause hilarity, hostility, or humiliation; so perhaps it was not as innocent as Addison thought.
For those discriminating ladies and gentlemen who did not care, or dare, to participate in a ridiculous, risky, or risqué parlour game but rather wished to stimulate their minds, there was a more dignified, more cerebral option than having one’s fingers burnt, noses tweaked, intimate secrets revealed, or faces smutted with soot. That alternative was word games. Again, no special equipment was required—other than, perhaps, a book or paper and pen. Intellectual acuity, however, gave one an advantage because puzzles often involved logic or puns with which to stump one’s family members, friends, and party guests. In his article ‘British Word Puzzles 1800-1850’, William F. Shortz states, “By the late 1700s and early 1800s, many new types of word puzzles had become popular in England. Charades began to rival enigmas and riddles in prevalence; and anagrams, transpositions, reversals, beheadments, and logogriphs all began to appear with greater frequency.”
The words enigma, conundrum, and riddle are sometimes used interchangeably. They all mean ‘something which baffles or perplexes’; but each was a different sort of puzzle during the early modern period. And, until the Victorian Era, ‘charades’ did not mean then what it does now. The following is a partial list of centuries-old word games, all designed to test one’s ingenuity or knowledge.
ACROSTIC: a word puzzle in which the first letter of each line of a poem makes up a name, usually a lady’s. In this acrostic, Miss Mary King is the solution. (The rhyme, however, was not created by Pride and Prejudice’s Mr Wickham.)
Mira have Pity and forgive my Crime
Inspir’d by thee, I Dare attempt to Rhime,
Superior Charms are in your Person seen;
Such as ye Poets feign the Gyptian Queen.
More Lively colours than ye Rose can Boast,
Adam your Cheeks in Admiration Lost,
Regarding BEAUX the Pow’r of Beauty feel
You Wounds, you Conquer but forget to Seal.
Know Lovely Maid you Excellent so Great
Is past ye Arts of Language to Relate
No Longer Free thy Pow’r. I fully Prove
Gains on ye Heart and Ripens into Love.
ANAGRAM: a word, phrase, or name formed by rearranging the letters of another word, preferably one directly related to the transposed word. Example from The Masquerade, 1798: hard case=charades.
BEHEADMENT/DECAPITATION: A word becomes another, sometimes successively, when a letter is chopped from its beginning. Example: aspirate—spirate (now obsolete)—pirate—irate—rate—ate.
The following puzzle—in which a letter is added rather than taken away—was created by George Canning, who served as Prime Minister of England for 119 days in 1827. Instead of a letter being taken away, one is added, so it’s the opposite of a beheadment.
Note: As with each numbered poser in this piece, the solution will be revealed at the blog post’s end.
(#1)
‘A word there is of plural number,
Foe to ease and tranquil slumber;
Any other word you take
And add an ‘s’ will plural make.
But if you add an ‘s’ to this,
So strange the metamorphosis;
Plural is plural now no more,
And sweet what bitter was before.’
CHARADE: A charade was a type of literary riddle with tricky language or wordplay. Around the second half of the 19th century, the term also referred to the game we’re more familiar with today, one in which a word or phrase is silently expressed through gestures. In a literary charade, however—whether on paper or spoken aloud and in prose or in rhyme—each syllable of the answer is described separately and enigmatically. Then the answer as a whole is described in a similarly cryptic fashion. Essentially, a charade is based on a compound word’s structure, and the solution is found by unravelling given clues. ‘My first’, ‘my second’, etc., refer to the word’s syllables, and ‘my whole’ means the entire answer.
(#2) My first is a preposition, my next a composition; my whole is an acquisition.
(#3) My first is company. My second shuns company. My third assembles company. My whole amuses company. Here’s a hint…
CONUNDRUM: a question asked for amusement, typically one with a pun in its answer.
(#4) Why is a man who has seen a young goat asleep likely to give an account of an abducted child?
The following is from a June 22, 2016, piece at The Public Domain Review and refers to an 1879 book—Guess Me: a curious collection of enigmas, charades, acting charades, double acrostics, conundrums, verbal puzzles, hieroglyphics, anagrams, etc.—compiled and arranged by Frederick D’Arros Planché and illustrated by George Cruikshank et al. “The preface explains that an enigma can have many solutions whereas a conundrum only has one.” The article then quotes from the book itself. “The essence of a good conundrum is to be found in its answer, which should be itself something of a pun, a puzzle, or an epigram, an inversion of the regular and ordinary meaning of the word.” Guess Me features 631 conundrums.
(#5) Why are good resolutions like fainting ladies?
RIDDLE: Dating back thousands of years—to the origin of the written word itself—a riddle is the most ancient type of literary puzzle. It’s a statement or question intentionally phrased so as to require ingenuity to ascertain its answer. Here’s a quote from a piece written by Manfred Dietrich titled ‘A Brief History of Riddles’ posted at The Society of Classical Poets. “Riddles can be playful or profound, poetic and probing, or enchanting with trickery and misdirection. Every play of words that relishes sense and sound appeals to our innermost feelings.”
The following poser (#6) is from the 17th century’s A Booke of Merrie Riddles. ‘Riddle me, riddle me what is this? Two legs sate upon thrée, with one leg in his hand, in came four legs and snatcht away one leg, then upstarts two legs, and flung thrée legs at four legs, and so got one leg again.’
Now here’s a poser with which Elizabeth Bennet, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, should have challenged Mr Darcy: (#7) What can be swallowed or can swallow a person? (Hint: The answer appears early in the novel’s title.) In turn, after his marriage proposal was scathingly rejected by her, Mr Darcy should have asked Elizabeth to solve this charade: (#8) ‘To suffer my second is the doom of my first; and of all of my seconds, my whole is the worst.’ Elizabeth would have known the gentleman was thinking of a two-syllable word rather than one of the polysyllabic ones Mr Bingley thought his friend favoured, and she would have known the solution was an affliction.
Jane Austen referenced charades in a letter she wrote in 1816: “Our day in Alton was very well pleasant – Venison quite right – Children well-behaved – & Mr and Mrs Digweed taking kindly to our Charades and other games”. Austen also featured word games in Emma, in which characters created their own riddles and charades. But one didn’t have to invent them. As Sarah Hove stated in her article ‘An Elegant Collection of Enigmas’ (posted June 3, 2016, at Folger Shakespeare Library), “As early as the sixteenth century, riddles were included in published anthologies, and they appeared in print steadily.” She goes on to say, “During the nineteenth century, an extraordinary explosion of books devoted to riddles and puzzles were published. The middle class in particular benefited from increases in both literacy rates and leisure time, while the publishing industry was able to produce and distribute books at lower costs making them affordable for a wide range of readers who could sharpen their wits while feeling in touch with literature and culture.”
Here’s what author Martine Bailey had to say on the subject. “By the 18th century almanacs were evolving to meet a largely middle-class desire for amusement and instruction. The Ladies’ Diary, founded in 1704, successfully featured essays on famous women, ferociously difficult mathematical problems, and rhyming riddles or ‘enigmas’. Soon ‘riddlemania’ gripped British readers. Unlike cryptic crosswords or sudoku, riddling was often a communal activity, as we see in Jane Austen’s Emma, when the Hartfield party is invited to contribute ‘any really good enigmas, charades or conundrums,’ to form a written collection. Jane Austen herself was a very clever writer of riddles—along with Jonathan Swift, Goethe, Edgar Allan Poe and many other great literary minds.”
Georgian-era brain teasers were a common feature in The Lady’s Magazine or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex, Appropriated Solely to Their Use and Amusement. The periodical did not print official answers but rather possible solutions offered by its readers.
There are far too many parlour game and/or word puzzle publications from the Georgian and Victorian eras (and earlier) to mention here; but many such books and magazines can be found online.
When attempting to solve posers from bygone days, remember that they might contain references to who or what were contemporary persons, places, and things. Also, some words had different meanings back then than they now have.
In closing, here’s one last literary charade (#9) for you:
My first, whatever be its hue,
Will please, if full of spirit;
My second critics love to do,
And stupid authors merit.
SOLUTIONS:
(#1) Cares+s=Caress
(#2) For+tune=Fortune
(#3) Co+nun+drum=Conundrum (pronunciation sounds like kuh·nuhn·druhm)
(#4) Because he has witnessed the kid napping
(#5) They want carrying out.
(#6) A man, sitting upon a three-footed stool, has a leg of mutton in his hand. A dog comes in and snatches it from him. The man stands and flings the stool at the dog and regains the leg of mutton.
(#7) Pride
(#8) Heart+ache=Heartache
(#9) Eye+lash=Eyelash
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Image Sources (all public domain):
Women Playing Blind Men's Buff, 1803, by unknown artist
Blind Man's Buff, by John Lewis Krimmel
Francis Hayman
Kissing under the Chandelier, Georges Jacques Gatine
Questions and Commands, by James Gillray, 1788
Illustration from Three Hundred Games and Pastimes, Google Books via Cornell University
Snip Snip Snapdragon, by Garrett
Lady's Magazine
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