Riddles and Their Answers

# Riddles and Their Answers

This issue of Street & Smith's Manual Library (No. 13, October 1890) is a collection of riddles, enigmas, charades, and puzzles compiled by Charles B. Eaton. The preface states the compiler selected examples with care, avoiding hackneyed riddles while including numerous original specimens, and excluded anything indelicate.

The contents consist entirely of word-play riddles and conundrums of varying difficulty, designed for parlor amusement. Examples include puns on homophones ("Why is a chicken-pie like a gunsmith's shop? Because it contains fowl in pieces"), logical absurdities ("Who was born before his father and died before his father? Abel"), and playful comparisons ("Why is a loiterer like a clock? Because he is always going and never gone"). The collection addresses contemporary subjects including commerce, professions, social customs, literature, and natural phenomena. The volume concludes with advertisement for Van Houten's Cocoa and promotional material for Street & Smith's Select Series of American fiction.