"Pa's" Puzzles

A LITTLE BOOK OF CHARADES--Alfred G. Rolfe--Christopher Publishing House, Boston ($1).

A lonely traveler dreading my first Remarked, "I am all my second. My third is coming, I fear the worst, on a friendly second I reckoned." And then a smile o'er his features stole For he heard the perfect voice of my whole.

A puzzle, not a surrealist limerick, the foregoing verse is a sample of the 50 "charades" contained in this second book of poems by the famed, well-beloved 77-year-old senior master of The Hill School, Pottstown, Pa. The whole word, obtained by guessing the first, second and third syllables, is "nightingale," but the sly author makes his readers work even harder to be sure of this. His 50 answers at the back of the book are written in cryptograms, and "nightingale" reads ezulnzeuowr.

Oldsters to whom the charade is the "prince of puzzles" will find this collection better than most since the nimble wit of Winthrop Mackworth Praed set the record. Closer to the riddle verse of folklore than to crossword puzzles, "Pa" Rolfe's charades ought to meet the hot-weather demand of many a plain reader for something humorous that does not cost much and may take the rest of the summer to finish.

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