e twists in
the meaning of words. A man recently propounded to me the old familiar
problem, "A boy walks round a pole on which is a monkey, but as the boy
walks the monkey turns on the pole so as to be always facing him on the
opposite side. Does the boy go around the monkey?" I replied that if he
would first give me his definition of "to go around" I would supply him
with the answer. Of course, he demurred, so that he might catch me either
way. I therefore said that, taking the words in their ordinary and
correct meaning, most certainly the boy went around the monkey. As was
expected, he retorted that it was not so, because he understood by "going
around" a thing that you went in such a way as to see all sides of it. To
this I made the obvious reply that consequently a blind man could not go
around anything.

He then amended his definition by saying that the actual seeing all sides
was not essential, but you went in such a way that, given sight, you
could see all sides. Upon which it was suggested that consequently you
could not walk around a man who had been shut up in a box! And so on. The
whole thing is amusingly stupid, and if at the start you, very properly,
decline to admit any but a simple and correct definition of "to go
around," there is no puzzle left, and you prevent an idle, and often
heated, argument.

When you have grasped your conditions, always see if you cannot simplify
them, for a lot of confusion is got rid of in this way. Many people are
puzzled over the old question of the man who, while pointing at a
portrait, says, "Brothers and sisters have I none, but that man's father
is my father's son." What relation did the man in the picture bear to the
speaker? Here you simplify by saying that "my father's son" must be
either "myself" or "my brother." But, since the speaker has no brother,
it is clearly "myself." The statement simplified is thus nothing more
than, "That man's father is myself," and it was obviously his son's
portrait. Yet people fight over this question by the hour!

There are mysteries that have never been solved in many branches of
Puzzledom. Let us consider a few in the world of numbers--little things
the conditions of which a child can understand, though the greatest minds
cannot master. Everybody has heard the remark, "It is as hard as squaring
a circle," though many people have a very hazy notion of what it means.
If you have a circle of given diameter and wish to find the side of