The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Handbook of Conundrums, by Edith B. Ordway

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Title: The Handbook of Conundrums

Author: Edith B. Ordway

Release Date: June 19, 2010 [EBook #32898]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE HANDBOOK
OF
CONUNDRUMS

BY

EDITH B. ORDWAY

Author of "The Etiquette of To-day," and
"Synonyms and Antonyms."

NEW YORK

GEORGE SULLY AND COMPANY

Copyright, 1914, by
SULLY and KLEINTEICH

Copyright, 1915, by
SULLY and KLEINTEICH

All rights reserved

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

PREFACE

This book presents a grindstone whereon the reader may whet his wits.
It is of sufficient hardness to resist the coarsest metal of
broad-bladed humor, and of sufficient fineness of grain to edge the
best steel of fancy.

Like all grindstones, though its form is new, its ingredients are of
remote origin. It has whetted many English and American blades for
the battle of ideas, and is, therefore, in places, somewhat worn.
There is, however, much absolutely fresh surface.

Any blade of fine temper properly ground upon it is warranted to
cleave to the dividing asunder of such subtle distinctions as that
between humorsome stupidity and precise wit, and that between the wit
of laughter only and the wit of insight.

E. B. O.

INTRODUCTION

A conundrum is a riddle in the form of a question, the answer to
which involves a pun. Originally the term was applied to any quaint
expression. It is thus, in its modern form, a union of the elaborated
riddle and the impromptu pun.

With the earliest development of intelligence came the discovery of
likeness and difference in things