THE LATEST CRAZE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5496, 28 June 1879, Page 7

THE LATEST CRAZE.

Osb of the greatest secrets of the astonishing success of the society journals, like the World, Truth, May/air, Whitehall, and bo on, has been the giving of such puzzles as acrostics, Fx'ench idioms, mesosticks, and that kind of thing, to be cudgelled out of their brains by their subscribers, who are stimulated by more or less valuable prizes to exert their wits in tho solutions. The plan has acted admirably, aud keen considered perfectly harmless, until the other day. "' An Old Fogey" writes, with the querulousness natural to his nom de plume, that, happening to visit a country house where formerly conversation was of the best and brighest, he found host, hostess, and guests all plunged in the tantalising mysteries of acrostics, and bending their united energies to the task of discovering what notable woman with a P in her name flourished in the I,3th century, with which nutcracker the accomplished editor of Truth had presented his votaries. "An Old Fogey" goes on to tell how every day it was the same, and that in more houses than one he found all conversation fall upon this extraordinary infatuation, against the foolishness, waste of time, and uselessness of which he inveighs. Theronpon the great array of puzzle-solvers came down powerfully upon him, and it was clearly pointed out that the people who studied these riddles were obliged to read books and think for themselves in a way no other inducement could bring them to do. All the great poets and historians are made to contribute to the modern acrostic, and they must be read to secure success to the ambitious guesser. And so the advocates of the practice urge that it has an educational and literary value simply unattainable by well-used methods. The abhorrers of the society journals, and ail that belong to them, stigmatise puzzles as an unmitigated nuisance, and the wordy battle has become so sharp that well-known authors and writers are beginning to descend into the arena; and a literary dispute of no mean dimensions is quickly springing up out of the cynical complaints of "AnOldFogey 1" Atall events, the puzzles of the society papers are better than the detestable scandals they promulgate aide by side with them. And it certainly is an argument in their favour that since their institution, first by the World, and subsequently in the other papers, the great reading-room of the British Museum has been daily besieged by an army of reference hunters, whom it is very certain these classic portals would never have seen but for the novel excitement of what is now dubbed " The Latest Craze."