PUZZLEMENT

The King of Siam considered women a puzzlement, and most men agree with his obeservation. There are other things that puzzle me, as described in this vignette. 12/21/2016

PUZZLEMENT

Puzzles puzzle me more than they should, which puzzles me. I find it difficult to solve the daily puzzles that appear in our newspaper, or to discover the hidden meaning of conundrums, or unmask sleight of hand tricks. The puzzle I will now describe is one that has long befuddled me, one I have never come close to solving.

Arrange 15 matchsticks (toothpicks, marbles, whatever) into a pattern of five columns and five rows as shown. (The first row contains five objects, the second row has four, the third row has three, the fourth row has two, and the fifth row has the one remaining item.)

I             I           I           I           I

I      I     I           I

I      I     I

I      I

I

Taking turns, players remove as many objects as they wish from any row. If it is your tune to pick but only one object remains, you have lost the game.

"You can go first," said the man who taught me the game. I picked off the top five from the first row. He removed all four from the second row, and then I removed all three from the third row. Uh-oh. He removed the two matchsticks from the fourth row down, forcing me to choose the last one in row five and suffer defeat.

"I'll go first this time," he said, but it made no difference. I do not recall the order in which we took turns removing the matchsticks, but again I lost. We alternated taking turns going first, but it made no never mind to him. I lost each and every time we played. In the intervening years I never figured out how to win this game, regardless of who goes first.

I played games against two other unbeatable foes in my pre-teens. One was my Uncle Bill; the other a neighbor named Mr. Roy. Neither of these gents eased up against me because of my youth. They played for keeps.

My Uncle Bill and I competed in the field of addition. He would ask me to write down two identical sets of random numbers in a four-column, ten-row arrangement. Then, we would add them up in a race against time. He would add two rows of four numbers at a time by covering up the remaining rows with his hand. When he completed the addition of all ten rows in that manner, he would write down their sum at the bottom of the columns.

I added in the traditional manner, one number at a time, starting with the bottom number in the Units column and then moving over to add those in the Tens, Hundreds and Thousands columns. The nuns in my grade school had taught me well, and I could add quickly and accurately. However, I could not match my Uncle Bill. He never made any mistakes and he always won.    

A neighbor and nemesis, Mr. Roy, helped sour my childhood. One summer afternoon he challenged me to a game of checkers. As a kindness, I decided to humor him. I lost that time, and the next, and the next, and on every occasion we played thereafter. He defeated me relentlessly with a cruel and bitter heart. I am glad he and his wife had no children of their own. He would have tortured them. I tried my best to beat him, but I never managed to win, not a single game. His death finally ended my non-stop losing streak.

Aging did not improve my ability to solve brainteasers. Did you ever play the two-word game: It can be green but not blue, floor but not ceiling, wall but not fence, door but not cabinet, knee but not leg, foot but not arm. Players who know the game keep up a running patter of these word groupings until a new player proves he has the answer by expressing a few correct examples. Those who know the clue are duty-bound not to reveal it to the remaining dimwits, like me. It took me forever to figure out this game which I endured while being initiated into a college fraternity. I thought the answer would be found in speech patterns, word associations, opposites, similarities, everything but the obvious. Are you able to give me an example? Good for you, bad for the rest.

Chess proved too challenging for me, but not for my nephew, who at ten years of age had mastered the game. I played against him a few times at family gatherings. His parents beamed at his ability to “whup” me with one hand behind his back. My college education had not prepared me to win board games that required thinking skills beyond the ability to count the pips on rolled dice.

Legerdemain is another activity that always fools me, or makes me appear to be a fool. One evening, a family member performed some after-dinner magic tricks, his latest hobby. I could not fathom the most rudimentary ruse, which baffled him.

"How come you don't see the obvious?" he asked.

"Beats me," I responded, a profoundly accurate summation. “I never look for easy solutions. I keep searching for something more complex. I'm a fan of Sherlock Holmes, not Dick Tracy.”

I have come to accept my shortcomings when it comes to playing games or solving riddles. I don’t lose any sleep over my inability to be a whiz bang at cards or to solve the word puzzles that appear in the daily paper that my wife does instantaneously.

Thank goodness, it does not appear that I have passed along these traits in the gene pool. My grandchildren solve my riddles and win most of the board games we play together. I am taking no chances, however. I have never taught them how to play the matchstick game. I have a feeling they would beat me every time.                 

Watch it, kid, or you’re outta the Will.

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