Scratching and Hatching.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 172, 21 July 1888, Page 2

Scratching and Hatching.

A CHANCE TO WIN HALF A GUINEA The egg and a half or the cat and a half, or to choose a brief term, the half-and-half puzzle, seems to have sent some persons half-witted. It is impossible to sit down at a public dinner-table without hearing of the half-half affair, some vulgar nincompoops not being above making references to the half-cat-rat theory, which is hardly an appropriate subject for discussion when one might be much better engaged in discussing the solids before him. The answers received are evidently more intended as “ borak ” than as serious guesses—can a guess be serious ?—and we imagine we can detect the original questioner’s hand-writing in one answer, though it has attached to it the name of an estimable citizen who would not be likely to indulge in frivolity. Numerous other equally incorrect answers to the egg riddle have been received, and a number of well-qualified arithmeticians have proved to their own and our satisfaction that different figures must be correct, but they are wrong nevertheless. In every office in town there are visible signs of the masters and clerks having been further racking their already over-wrought brain in the endeavor to get at the right answer —in some places, indeed, elaborate Bums have been worked out, proving indisputably to the different geniuses that they must be right (the figures do not tally, either). The schoolboys have got the riddle off by heart, and it is a common circumstance to h-ar them rattling off and prattling over different answers; but their elders are even worse, and the riddle has been the cause of many a sleepless night. The harbor question has almost vanished from many people’s thoughts in the anxiety over the egg puzzle, and the country people are not behind hand in favoring us with their opinions—all wrong, though. Yet the Press states that the riddle is laughably easy, and is actually clucking and pecking to get out of its shell. So as to hasten the process of incubation, and relieve the anxiety of our readers, we have, decided to offer a prize of half a guinea to the person who first sends us in the correct answer as given by tbe originator of the puzzle, the Wellington Pre.s., Each reply must be given in one of the eon joined coupons, or a separate coupon must be enclosed with each answer.—