Henry Dudeney
Encyclopedia
Henry Ernest Dudeney was an English
author
and mathematician
who specialised in logic puzzle
s and mathematical game
s. He is known as one of the country's foremost creators of puzzles. His last name is pronounced with a long "u" and a strong accent on the first syllable, as in "scrutiny".
at an early age, and continued to play frequently throughout his life. This led to a marked interest in mathematics
and the composition of puzzle
s. Chess problems in particular fascinated him during his early years.
, he continued to devise various problems and puzzles. Dudeney's first puzzle contributions were submissions to newspapers and magazines, often under the pseudonym
of "Sphinx." Much of this earlier work was a collaboration with American puzzlist Sam Loyd
; in 1890, they published a series of articles in the English penny weekly Tit-Bits.
Dudeney later contributed puzzles under his real name to publications such as The Weekly Dispatch, The Queen, Blighty, and Cassell's Magazine. For twenty years, he had a successful column, "Perplexities", in the magazine The Strand, edited by the former editor of Tit-Bits, George Newnes. Dudeney continued to exchange puzzles with fellow recreational mathematician
Sam Loyd
for a while, but broke off the correspondence and accused Loyd of stealing his puzzles and publishing them under his own name.
Some of Dudeney's most famous innovations were his 1903 success at solving the Haberdasher's Puzzle (Cut an equilateral triangle into four pieces that can be rearranged to make a square
) and publishing the first known crossnumber puzzle
, in 1926. In addition, he has been credited with inventing verbal arithmetic
and discovering new applications of digital root
s.
under the name "Mrs. Henry Dudeney". In her day, she was compared to Thomas Hardy
for her portrayals of regional life. The income generated by her books was important to the Dudeney household, and her fame gained them entry to both literary and court circles.
After losing their first child at the age of four months in 1887, the Dudeneys had one daughter, Margery Janet (1890–1977). She married (John) Christopher Fulleylove, son of John Fulleylove
and one of an esteemed family of English artists. The Fulleyloves emigrated to North America, first living in Canada and eventually settling first in Oakland, Michigan, and later New York. They had three sons: John Gabriel (died in infancy), James Shirley, and Julian John ("Barney"); and two daughters: Catherine and Elizabeth Ann ("Nancy").
Alice's personal diaries were edited by Diana Crook and published in 1998 under the title A Lewes Diary: 1916–1944. They give a lively picture of her attempts to balance her literary career with her marriage to her brilliant but volatile husband.
In April 1930, Dudeney died of throat cancer in Lewes
, where he and his wife had moved in 1914 after a period of separation to rekindle their marriage. Alice Dudeney survived him by fourteen years and died on 21 November 1945, after a stroke. Both are buried in the Lewes town cemetery. Their grave is marked by a copy of an 18th century Sussex sandstone obelisk, which Alice had copied after Ernest's death to serve as their mutual tombstone.
In addition to puzzles, Dudeney had hobbies including billiards
, bowling
, and especially croquet
. He was a skilled pianist and organist, interested in ancient church music and plainsong
. Dudeney was a devout Anglican who regularly attended services, studied theology, and on occasion wrote tracts defending church positions.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
and mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
who specialised in logic puzzle
Logic puzzle
A logic puzzle is a puzzle deriving from the mathematics field of deduction.-History:The logic puzzle was first produced by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who is better known under his pen name Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...
s and mathematical game
Mathematical game
A mathematical game is a multiplayer game whose rules, strategies, and outcomes can be studied and explained by mathematics. Examples of such games are Tic-tac-toe and Dots and Boxes, to name a couple. On the surface, a game need not seem mathematical or complicated to still be a mathematical game...
s. He is known as one of the country's foremost creators of puzzles. His last name is pronounced with a long "u" and a strong accent on the first syllable, as in "scrutiny".
Early life
Dudeney was born in the village of Mayfield, East Sussex, England. His grandfather, John Dudeney, was well known as a self-taught mathematician and shepherd; his initiative was much admired by his grandson. Dudeney learned to play chessChess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
at an early age, and continued to play frequently throughout his life. This led to a marked interest in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and the composition of puzzle
Puzzle
A puzzle is a problem or enigma that tests the ingenuity of the solver. In a basic puzzle, one is intended to put together pieces in a logical way in order to come up with the desired solution...
s. Chess problems in particular fascinated him during his early years.
Career
Although Dudeney spent his career in the Civil ServiceBritish Civil Service
Her Majesty's Home Civil Service, also known as the Home Civil Service, is the permanent bureaucracy of Crown employees that supports Her Majesty's Government - the government of the United Kingdom, composed of a Cabinet of ministers chosen by the prime minister, as well as the devolved...
, he continued to devise various problems and puzzles. Dudeney's first puzzle contributions were submissions to newspapers and magazines, often under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
of "Sphinx." Much of this earlier work was a collaboration with American puzzlist Sam Loyd
Sam Loyd
Samuel Loyd , born in Philadelphia and raised in New York, was an American chess player, chess composer, puzzle author, and recreational mathematician....
; in 1890, they published a series of articles in the English penny weekly Tit-Bits.
Dudeney later contributed puzzles under his real name to publications such as The Weekly Dispatch, The Queen, Blighty, and Cassell's Magazine. For twenty years, he had a successful column, "Perplexities", in the magazine The Strand, edited by the former editor of Tit-Bits, George Newnes. Dudeney continued to exchange puzzles with fellow recreational mathematician
Recreational mathematics
Recreational mathematics is an umbrella term, referring to mathematical puzzles and mathematical games.Not all problems in this field require a knowledge of advanced mathematics, and thus, recreational mathematics often attracts the curiosity of non-mathematicians, and inspires their further study...
Sam Loyd
Sam Loyd
Samuel Loyd , born in Philadelphia and raised in New York, was an American chess player, chess composer, puzzle author, and recreational mathematician....
for a while, but broke off the correspondence and accused Loyd of stealing his puzzles and publishing them under his own name.
Some of Dudeney's most famous innovations were his 1903 success at solving the Haberdasher's Puzzle (Cut an equilateral triangle into four pieces that can be rearranged to make a square
Square (geometry)
In geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral. This means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles...
) and publishing the first known crossnumber puzzle
Cross-figure
A cross-figure is a puzzle similar to a crossword in structure, but with entries which consist of numbers rather than words, with individual digits being entered in the blank cells...
, in 1926. In addition, he has been credited with inventing verbal arithmetic
Verbal arithmetic
Verbal arithmetic, also known as alphametics, cryptarithmetic, crypt-arithmetic, cryptarithm or word addition, is a type of mathematical game consisting of a mathematical equation among unknown numbers, whose digits are represented by letters. The goal is to identify the value of each letter...
and discovering new applications of digital root
Digital root
The digital root of a number is the value obtained by an iterative process of summing digits, on each iteration using the result from the previous iteration to compute a digit sum...
s.
Personal life
In 1884 Dudeney married Alice Whiffin (1864–1945). She later became a very well known writer who published many novels as well as a number of short stories in Harper's MagazineHarper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
under the name "Mrs. Henry Dudeney". In her day, she was compared to Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
for her portrayals of regional life. The income generated by her books was important to the Dudeney household, and her fame gained them entry to both literary and court circles.
After losing their first child at the age of four months in 1887, the Dudeneys had one daughter, Margery Janet (1890–1977). She married (John) Christopher Fulleylove, son of John Fulleylove
John Fulleylove
John Fulleylove was an English landscape artist and illustrator.Born in Leicester, he originally trained as an architect with local firm "Shenton and Baker", before becoming an artist in watercolours and oils...
and one of an esteemed family of English artists. The Fulleyloves emigrated to North America, first living in Canada and eventually settling first in Oakland, Michigan, and later New York. They had three sons: John Gabriel (died in infancy), James Shirley, and Julian John ("Barney"); and two daughters: Catherine and Elizabeth Ann ("Nancy").
Alice's personal diaries were edited by Diana Crook and published in 1998 under the title A Lewes Diary: 1916–1944. They give a lively picture of her attempts to balance her literary career with her marriage to her brilliant but volatile husband.
In April 1930, Dudeney died of throat cancer in Lewes
Lewes
Lewes is the county town of East Sussex, England and historically of all of Sussex. It is a civil parish and is the centre of the Lewes local government district. The settlement has a history as a bridging point and as a market town, and today as a communications hub and tourist-oriented town...
, where he and his wife had moved in 1914 after a period of separation to rekindle their marriage. Alice Dudeney survived him by fourteen years and died on 21 November 1945, after a stroke. Both are buried in the Lewes town cemetery. Their grave is marked by a copy of an 18th century Sussex sandstone obelisk, which Alice had copied after Ernest's death to serve as their mutual tombstone.
In addition to puzzles, Dudeney had hobbies including billiards
Billiards
Cue sports , also known as billiard sports, are a wide variety of games of skill generally played with a cue stick which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiards table bounded by rubber .Historically, the umbrella term was billiards...
, bowling
Bowling
Bowling Bowling Bowling (1375–1425; late Middle English bowle, variant of boule Bowling (1375–1425; late Middle English bowle, variant of boule...
, and especially croquet
Croquet
Croquet is a lawn game, played both as a recreational pastime and as a competitive sport. It involves hitting plastic or wooden balls with a mallet through hoops embedded into the grass playing court.-History:...
. He was a skilled pianist and organist, interested in ancient church music and plainsong
Plainsong
Plainsong is a body of chants used in the liturgies of the Catholic Church. Though the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Catholic Church did not split until long after the origin of plainchant, Byzantine chants are generally not classified as plainsong.Plainsong is monophonic, consisting of a...
. Dudeney was a devout Anglican who regularly attended services, studied theology, and on occasion wrote tracts defending church positions.
Publications
- The Canterbury PuzzlesThe Canterbury PuzzlesThe Canterbury Puzzles and Other Curious Problems is a 1907 mathematical puzzle book by Henry Dudeney. The first part of the book features a series of puzzles based on the characters from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffery Chaucer....
(1907) - Amusements in Mathematics (1917)
- The World's Best Word Puzzles (1925)
- Modern Puzzles (1926)
- Puzzles and Curious Problems (1931, posthumous)
- A Puzzle-Mine (undated, posthumous)
