Thos.  Bloggs  m . . . . .
|
+------------------------+------------+
|                        |            |
|                        |            |
|    W. Snoggs m Kate Bloggs.         |
|              |                      |
|              |                      |
. . m Henry Bloggs.         |                Joseph Bloggs m
|                       |                              |
|              +--------+-------------+                |
|              |                      |                |
|              |                      |                |
Jane            John                    Alf.             Mary
Bloggs    m     Snoggs                  Snoggs    m     Bloggs

]

The letter m stands for “married.”  It will be seen that John Snoggs can say to Joseph Bloggs, “You are my father’s brother-in-law, because my father married your sister Kate; you are my brother’s father-in-law, because my brother Alfred married your daughter Mary; and you are my father-in-law’s brother, because my wife Jane was your brother Henry’s daughter.”

56.—­WILSON’S POSER.

If there are two men, each of whom marries the mother of the other, and there is a son of each marriage, then each of such sons will be at the same time uncle and nephew of the other.  There are other ways in which the relationship may be brought about, but this is the simplest.

57.—­WHAT WAS THE TIME?

The time must have been 9.36 p.m.  A quarter of the time since noon is 2 hr. 24 min., and a half of the time till noon next day is 7 hr. 12 min.  These added together make 9 hr. 36 min.

58.—­A TIME PUZZLE.

Twenty-six minutes.

59.—­A PUZZLING WATCH.

If the 65 minutes be counted on the face of the same watch, then the problem would be impossible:  for the hands must coincide every 65+5/11 minutes as shown by its face, and it matters not whether it runs fast or slow; but if it is measured by true time, it gains 5/11 of a minute in 65 minutes, or 60/143 of a minute per hour.

60.—­THE WAPSHAW’S WHARF MYSTERY.

There are eleven different times in twelve hours when the hour and minute hands of a clock are exactly one above the other.  If we divide 12 hours by 11 we get 1 hr. 5 min. 27+3/11 sec., and this is the time after twelve o’clock when they are first together, and also the time that elapses between one occasion of the hands being together and the next.  They are together for the second time at 2 hr. 10 min. 54+6/11 sec. (twice the above time); next at 3 hr. 16 min. 21+9/11 sec.; next at 4 hr. 21 min. 49+1/11 sec.  This last is the only occasion on which the two hands are together with the second hand “just past the forty-ninth second.”  This, then, is the time at which the watch must have stopped.  Guy Boothby, in the opening sentence of his Across the World for a Wife, says, “It was a cold, dreary winter’s afternoon, and by the time the hands of the clock on my mantelpiece joined forces and stood at twenty minutes past four, my chambers were well-nigh as dark as midnight.”  It is evident that the author here made a slip, for, as we have seen above, he is 1 min. 49+1/11 sec. out in his reckoning.