[Illustration]
A Chance-gathered company of pilgrims, on their way to the shrine of
Saint Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, met at the old Tabard Inn, later
called the Talbot, in Southwark, and the host proposed that they should
beguile the ride by each telling a tale to his fellow-pilgrims. This we
all know was the origin of the immortal _Canterbury Tales_ of our great
fourteenth-century poet, Geoffrey Chaucer. Unfortunately, the tales were
never completed, and perhaps that is why the quaint and curious
"Canterbury Puzzles," devised and propounded by the same body of
pilgrims, were not also recorded by the poet's pen. This is greatly to be
regretted, since Chaucer, who, as Leland tells us, was an "ingenious
mathematician" and the author of a learned treatise on the astrolabe, was
peculiarly fitted for the propounding of problems. In presenting for the
first time some of these old-world posers, I will not stop to explain the
singular manner in which they came into my possession, but proceed at
once, without unnecessary preamble, to give my readers an opportunity of
solving them and testing their quality. There are certainly far more
difficult puzzles extant, but difficulty and interest are two qualities
of puzzledom that do not necessarily go together.