The Canterbury Puzzles

Henry Ernest Dudeney's 1907 collection, in which the pilgrims of Chaucer's road set each other puzzles of weights, measures, crossings, dissections and chessboards. All 114 are retold in modern words and solved in full, alongside the original plates.

Dudeney framed his puzzles as a story: the Canterbury pilgrims, a haberdasher, a knight, a miller, pass the road setting riddles for one another, and later chapters move to a castle, a puzzle club and a professor’s study. This edition keeps his settings and his plates, restates each puzzle so that it can be attempted without guessing at Edwardian wording, and gives every answer with the reasoning that reaches it.