. Can you count the number of
different ways in which those four stamps might be delivered? There are
not many more than fifty ways, so it is not a big count. Can you get the
exact number?

286.--PAINTING THE DIE.

In how many different ways may the numbers on a single die be marked,
with the only condition that the 1 and 6, the 2 and 5, and the 3 and 4
must be on opposite sides? It is a simple enough question, and yet it
will puzzle a good many people.

287.--AN ACROSTIC PUZZLE.

In the making or solving of double acrostics, has it ever occurred to
you to consider the variety and limitation of the pair of initial and
final letters available for cross words? You may have to find a word
beginning with A and ending with B, or A and C, or A and D, and so on.
Some combinations are obviously impossible--such, for example, as those
with Q at the end. But let us assume that a good English word can be
found for every case. Then how many possible pairs of letters are
available?

CHESSBOARD PROBLEMS.

"You and I will goe to the chesse."

GREENE'S _Groatsworth of Wit._

During a heavy gale a chimney-pot was hurled through the air, and
crashed upon the pavement just in front of a pedestrian. He quite calmly
said, "I have no use for it: I do not smoke." Some readers, when they
happen to see a puzzle represented on a chessboard with chess pieces,
are apt to make the equally inconsequent remark, "I have no use for it:
I do not play chess." This is largely a result of the common, but
erroneous, notion that the ordinary chess puzzle with which we are
familiar in the press (dignified, for some reason, with the name
"problem") has a vital connection with the game of chess itself. But
there is no condition in the game that you shall checkmate your opponent
in two moves, in three moves, or in four moves, while the majority of
the positions given in these puzzles are such that one player would have
so great a superiority in pieces that the other would have resigned
before the situations were reached. And the solving of them helps you
but little, and that quite indirectly, in playing the game, it being
well known that, as a rule, the best "chess problemists" are indifferent
players, and _vice versa_. Occasionally a man will be found strong on
both subjects, but he is the exception to the rule.

Yet the simple chequered board and the characteristic moves of the
pieces lend themselves in a very remarkable manner