Tommy knows the trick, and has shown it to his father, who professes to have a contempt for such things; but when the children are in bed the pater will often take friends out into the hall and enjoy a good laugh at their bewilderment.  And yet it is all so very simple when you know how it is done.

419.—­THE FIVE PENNIES.

Here is a really hard puzzle, and yet its conditions are so absurdly simple.  Every reader knows how to place four pennies so that they are equidistant from each other.  All you have to do is to arrange three of them flat on the table so that they touch one another in the form of a triangle, and lay the fourth penny on top in the centre.  Then, as every penny touches every other penny, they are all at equal distances from one another.  Now try to do the same thing with five pennies—­place them so that every penny shall touch every other penny—­and you will find it a different matter altogether.

420.—­THE INDUSTRIOUS BOOKWORM.

[Illustration]

Our friend Professor Rackbrane is seen in the illustration to be propounding another of his little posers.  He is explaining that since he last had occasion to take down those three volumes of a learned book from their place on his shelves a bookworm has actually bored a hole straight through from the first page to the last.  He says that the leaves are together three inches thick in each volume, and that every cover is exactly one-eighth of an inch thick, and he asks how long a tunnel had the industrious worm to bore in preparing his new tube railway.  Can you tell him?

421.—­A CHAIN PUZZLE.

[Illustration]

This is a puzzle based on a pretty little idea first dealt with by the late Mr. Sam Loyd.  A man had nine pieces of chain, as shown in the illustration.  He wanted to join these fifty links into one endless chain.  It will cost a penny to open any link and twopence to weld a link together again, but he could buy a new endless chain of the same character and quality for 2s. 2d.  What was the cheapest course for him to adopt?  Unless the reader is cunning he may find himself a good way out in his answer.

422.—­THE SABBATH PUZZLE.

I have come across the following little poser in an old book.  I wonder how many readers will see the author’s intended solution to the riddle.

    Christians the week’s first day for Sabbath hold;
    The Jews the seventh, as they did of old;
    The Turks the sixth, as we have oft been told. 
    How can these three, in the same place and day,
    Have each his own true Sabbath? tell, I pray.

423.—­THE RUBY BROOCH.

The annals of Scotland Yard contain some remarkable cases of jewel robberies, but one of the most perplexing was the theft of Lady Littlewood’s rubies.  There have, of course, been many greater robberies in point of value, but few so artfully conceived.  Lady Littlewood, of Romley Manor, had a beautiful but rather eccentric heirloom in the form of a ruby brooch.  While staying at her town house early in the eighties she took the jewel to a shop in Brompton for some slight repairs.