GAME OF CHANCE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17567, 18 June 1925, Page 1

GAME OF CHANCE.

CROSS-WORD PUZZLES. PRIZE GIVING ILLEGAL. J>o you . think that cross-word puzzles are a, game of chance?” a reporter asked. a legal authority this morning. “A game of chance!” was tho surprised reply. “ I would call it a game that requires skill, education, and a lot of search in dictionaries and other reference Jiooks.” The cahjegmm from Adelaide to the effect that the Crown Law Department had declared cross-word puzzles to ho illegal under the. Lottery » and Gaming Act, apparently regarding them as games or chance, was then brought under the notice of the legal authority and an explanation sought. The reply was that, the cable had been so condensed that tho actual meaning had been obscured. Crossword puzzles themselves could not by any stretch of imagination be regarded as a game of chance. Jt was fairly obvious that the cable referred to the practice of offering a prize for the correct solution of a cross-word puzzle. The usual way was to giro the prize to the first correct answer opened and it vas heto that tho competition caruo under the Gaming Act. A hundred correct answers anight bo sent in for ono competition, hut the winner was selected purely by chance. The only way to get out of tho difficulty would bo to give a prize to overv successful competitor, but he supposed that this would hardly be practicable. The legal authority quoted an Eng. j lish ease in which the owners of a newspaper offered it prize to one of its readers, who, on payment of sixpence, added the best lino to an unfinished limerick, the editor’s decision to bo final. Jt was held that this was a lottery. In this rase it was riot a question of supplying a correct answer hut one which, in the opinion of the editor, was the best, hut even so the competition was held to be illegal.