| You might go on to ask, `How am I to know when eight o'clock does come? My clock will not tell me.' Be
patient: you know that when eight o'clock comes your clock is right, very good; then your rule is this: keep
your eye fixed on your clock, and the very moment it is right it will be eight o'clock. `But----,' you say.
There, that'll do; the more you argue the farther you get from the point, so it will be as well to stop.
PROBLEMS AND CURIOSITIES The following diagram, which should be copied upon a square piece of paper,
 and then cut out along the dotted lines, represents another favourite puzzle of Mr. Dodgson's. When
the square has been divided into its four sections it will be found that they may not only be arranged as
a square but also as an oblong. In the first case the figure appears to be made up of sixty-four small
squares, in the second of sixty-five, and the puzzle is to account for this discrepancy.
1 Four gentlemen and their wives wanted to cross the river in a boat that would not hold more
than two at a time.
The conditions were, that no gentleman must leave his wife on the bank unless with only women or by
herself, and also that some one must always bring the boat back.
How did they do it?
2 A customer bought goods in a shop to the amount of 7/3d. The only money he had was a half-
sovereign, a florin and a sixpence: so he wanted change. The shopman only had a crown, a shilling, and
a penny. But a friend happened to come in, who had a double-florin, a half-crown, a fourpenny-bit, and
a threepenny-bit.
Could they manage it?
3 A captive Queen and her son and daughter were shut up in the top room of a very high tower.
Outside their window was a pulley with a rope round it, and a basket fastened at each end of the rope
of equal weight. They managed to escape with the help of this and a weight they found in the room
quite safely. It would have been dangerous for any of them to come down if they weighed more than 15
lb. more than the contents of the lower basket, for they would do so too quickly, and they also managed
not to weigh less either.
The one basket coming down would naturally of course draw the other up.
How did they do it?
The Queen weighed 195 lb., daughter 165, son 90, and the weight 75.
This is an addition to the puzzle --
The Queen had with her in the room, besides her son and daughter and the weight, a pig weighing 60
lb., a dog 45 lb., and a cat 30. These have to be brought down safely too, with the same restriction.
The weight can come down any way, of course.
The additional puzzle consists in this -- there must be some one at each end to put the animals into and
out of the baskets.
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