"Conundrum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... repetition of this inscrutable conundrum, a lank and tall girl of some fifteen summers, arose and said, not without something of the sublime air becoming a solitary intelligence: "It's ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... in hopes you could tell. I don't know, I am sure. It is as much as I can do to make up a conundrum, without ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... my intention to make some disparaging remarks about the human race; and so I kept this letter open for that purpose, and for the purpose of telling my dream, wherein the Trinity were trying to guess a conundrum, but I can do better—for I can snip out of the "Times" various samples and side-lights which bring the race down to date, and expose it as of yesterday. If you will notice, there is seldom a telegram in a paper which fails to show up one or more ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... crude bud ever anticipated blooming out into a society blossom was a conundrum. Perhaps he had some secret method buried in the same box with his hoarded coin. His long evenings were passed reading the Family Herald and Weekly Star and the Ashcroft Journal by candle-light; for those were the only papers he would subscribe for. His bed consisted ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... exploited their humorous abilities, and all made merry, save one glum guest. At last, they insisted that this melancholy person should contribute to the entertainment. He consented, in response to much urging, to offer a conundrum: ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... of the tall, slim figure Detective Inspector Wessex stared with a sort of wonder. Mr. Nicol Brinn of Cincinnati was a conundrum which he found himself unable to catalogue, although in his gallery of queer characters were many eccentric and peculiar. If Nicol Brinn should prove to be crooked, then automatically he became insane. This Wessex had reasoned out even before ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... Polynices, one of OEdipus's sons, means in the original "much quarrelling." In the altercations between the two brothers, in AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, this conceit is employed; and it is remarkable, that so poor a conundrum could not be rejected by any of these three poets, so justly celebrated for their taste and simplicity. What could Shakspeare have done worse? Terence has his "inceptio est amentium, non amanthim." ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... absolute liberty of choice. It may be a personal narrative, like Poe's "Descent into the Maelstrom" or Hale's "My Double, and How he Undid me;" it may be impersonal, like Mr. F.B. Perkins's "Devil-Puzzlers" or Colonel De Forest's "Brigade Commander;" it may be a conundrum, like Mr. Stockton's insoluble query, "The Lady or the Tiger?" it may be "A Bundle of Letters," like Mr. James's story, or "A Letter and a Paragraph," like Mr. Bunner's; it may be a medley of letters and telegrams and narrative, like Mr. Aldrich's "Margery ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... first impressions of Indian life. "Erroneous, hazy, distorted first impressions," Mr Aberich Mackay calls them in his "Twenty-one days in India," that most amusing Indian classic. "What is it these travelling people put on paper?" he adds. "Let me put it in the form of a conundrum. Q. What is it that the travelling M.P. treasures up and what the Anglo-Indian hastens to throw away? A. Erroneous, hazy, distorted first impressions. Before the eyes of the griffin, India steams in poetical mists, illusive, fantastic, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... always so easy to decide how far that kind of thing's binding... and they say shipwrecked fellows'll make a meal of friend as quick as they would of a total stranger." He drew himself together with a shake of his shoulders and pulled back his feet from the grate. "But I don't see the conundrum in your case, I guess it's up to both parties to take care of their ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... number of anonymous contributions, only a very few of which were ever used, and of fewer still was the authorship placed upon record. Early in 1843, however (p. 82, Vol. IV.), Mr. Blackwood, of Edinburgh, sent in one of the earliest of Scottish witticisms, a conundrum; Joseph O'Leary, a reporter of the "Morning Herald," is said to have contributed a poem on "The English Vandal;" and R. B. Peake, who had adapted "A Night with Punch" for W. J. Hammond, began his little series of "Punch's Provincial ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... by contact with London top-floor grubbiness. The child was, in fact, too full of the reality of her happiness with Donal and Donal's mother to be more than faintly bewildered by a sort of visionary conundrum. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... music find a music-box is yet an unsettled conundrum. Such is likely to be the fate of the question raised with so much temper over the Passion Music of that great man by the English critics. Shame on all critics that condemn MOZART as a fogy and BACH as a nuisance. Of course it is going back on BACH with a vengeance, but what sympathy can exist ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... Equivocalness — N. equivocalness &c adj.; double meaning &c 516; ambiguity, double entente, double entendre [Fr.], pun, paragram^, calembour^, quibble, equivoque [Fr.], anagram; conundrum &c (riddle) 533; play on words, word play &c (wit) 842; homonym, homonymy [Gramm.]; amphiboly^, amphibology^; ambilogy^, ambiloquy^. Sphinx, Delphic oracle. equivocation &c (duplicity) 544; white lie, mental reservation &c (concealment) 528; paltering. V. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... near the boil.' Elise rose with a strange little laugh and looked at a yellow silk stocking which dangled over the side of a wicker table. As if trying to solve a conundrum, she glanced from it to the shapely form of the young woman at her toilet. 'When the war's over,' she said ruminatingly, 'and our men find what kind of girls they married when they were ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... of the schoolmaster's death Slaughter had been a greater conundrum than ever to the men of Birralong. His visits to the store had become less and less frequent, and his bearing, when he did come, more and more distant and reserved. Not even the story of the diggers' arrival and dispersing interested ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... started a conundrum: "Why is Daniel Webster like Sisera? Because he was killed by a woman," and this had almost as great a run as the ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... was nothing but a good-natured young fellow, whose palate could be pleased by her culinary skill; she treated him, I dare say, exactly as she would have treated one of her own sex. She seemed to think over my words, as one who considers a conundrum, then she apparently gave it up as hopeless, and shook her head lightly as though ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... to mention that it is "a cherry," but this is by no means the case with all Chinese riddles, many being exceedingly difficult of solution. So much so that it is customary all over the Empire to copy out any particularly puzzling conundrum on a paper lantern, and hang it in the evening at the street door, with the promise of a reward to any comer who may succeed in unravelling it. These are called "lamp riddles," and usually turn upon the name of ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... walked towards it as if to touch it, but refrained, not from sudden shame but from sheer despair. By and by Therese drifted in. It was then late and, I imagine, she was on her way to bed. She looked the picture of cheerful, rustic innocence and started propounding to me a conundrum which began with ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... which "arises" in a "narrowed form" upon "secular testimony"? After much guessing, I am fain to give up the conundrum. The "question" may be the ownership of the pigs; or the ethnological character of the Gadarenes; or the propriety of meddling with other people's property without legal warrant. And each of these questions might be so "narrowed" ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... lane, and found there awaiting them the evident model of the Autocrat's "One-Hoss Shay," in its last five years of senility;—to this was attached a quadruped who immediately reminded Mysie of a long-forgotten conundrum. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... truth. He came here long ago; But, before that, he'd been born somewhere: The conundrum started first, right there. Little shaver—afore he knew his name Or the place from whereabouts he came— On a wagon-train the Apaches caught him. Killed the old folks! But this cus'—they brought him Safe away from fire an' knife an' arrows. So'thin' 'bout him ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... said Uncle Bill Browne to Rocjean, with the air of a man about to ask a hard conundrum, 'why beards, long hair, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the difference, although you often looked. I used to wonder how you could look so intelligently and see so little"—and she glanced down at herself, so unmistakably a woman now that he knew. She had been like a conundrum, the answer to which you would never have guessed for yourself, but you see it at once when you hear it, and then it seems so simple. She was rather inclined to speak to the Tenor in a half pitying, patronizing way, as to a weak ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... there was any remarkable merit in the movements of the Spanish Admiral is as absurd as to attribute particular cleverness to a child who, with his hands behind his back, asks the old conundrum, "Right or left?" "It is all a matter of guess," said Nelson, "and the world attributes wisdom to him who guesses right;" but all the same, by unremitting watchfulness, sagacious inference, and diligent pursuit, ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... The conundrum was unanswerable. Baxter did not attempt to answer it. But there remained at the back of his mind a quaint idea that he had caught sight, as he woke, of the Honorable Frederick Threepwood, his face warningly contorted, vanishing through the doorway. Yet ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... altogether satisfactory, and Smith apparently was unable to grapple with the problem. It puzzled him; but then Handy himself was at all times more or less of a conundrum to him. ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... in the midst of a babbling Simonetta of echoes.' Inferior writers have copied the tones of the oracle without first making sure of the inspiration. They forget that a platitude is not turned into a profundity by being dressed up as a conundrum. Pithiness in him dwindles into tenuity in them; honest discontinuity in the master is made an excuse for finical incoherencies in the disciples; the quaint, ingenious, and unexpected collocations of the original degenerate in the imitators into a trick of unmeaning ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... some few weeks later, and next morning they prepared to start. Every detail of the outing was a facet reflecting a sparkle to Jude, and he did not venture to meditate on the life of inconsistency he was leading. His Sue's conduct was one lovely conundrum to him; he ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... now, he was pointed out as a distinguished figure, and his quaint remarks were quoted. Few of these sayings are remembered to-day, though occasionally one is still unforgotten. At a party one night, being urged to make a conundrum, he said: ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... upon our hands, were responsible for everything. For how much more, how many other changes, she would be responsible the future only could answer. And the future would answer in its own good, or bad, time. My conundrum "What are we going to do with her?" was as much of a puzzle as ever. For my part I gave it up. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof—much ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... expense because he "might want to stretch the loafin' half." And he hired Issy because—well, because "most folks in East Harniss are alike and you can always tell about what they'll say or do. Now Issy's different. The Lord only knows what HE'S likely to do, and that makes him interestin' as a conundrum, to guess at. He kind of keeps my sense of responsibility from ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... minutes,' rejoined Skepsey, eyeing him intently and kindly: insomuch that it could be seen he was not in the conundrum vein. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 'You are a pink-and-white conundrum, Margery,' he said; 'and I give you up for to-night. Anybody would think the devil had showed you all the kingdoms of the world since ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... "Woman is the eternal conundrum to which the wise man always leaves her herself to supply the answer. Doubtless one of these days you'll do it. Meanwhile, I'll wait ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... grow by method, and character by caprice? If we cannot calculate to a certainty that the forces of religion will do their work, then is religion vain. And if we cannot express the law of these forces in simple words, then is Christianity not the world's religion, but the world's conundrum. ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... life. Or was it Republicans? I forget. I had given 'em a good, hot, mixed Princeton paper,—dog, international law, society, industrial progress, footlight favorites, and the whole business; had Sermons from Many Lands, and a Conundrum Department, as well as a Household Corner—How to get Beautiful for the ladies, How to get Rich for the men, How to get Strong for the advertisers—why, if I do say it, I don't believe any one fellow was ever much more cosmopolitan in all his life, inside the space of one night's writin'. ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... Jack Frost. "I 'll put it in the form of a conundrum: If a thing having two wheels is called a bicycle, what would a thing having but ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... "A conundrum! I never guessed one, so I shall have to give this up. But don't you see how it is, dearest? I try to be good to her, and she won't meet me half-way. On the contrary, she tries to nag me, I think. It wasn't ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... to be meek, there was no boy this side of the planet Mars who could be meeker, on shorter notice. So he said, "Yes, sir," with that subdued and well pleased alacrity of a boy who has just been asked to guess the answer to the conundrum, "Will you have another ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... a conundrum, I know," said Joe; and he leaned his head on his hand and settled down ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... third largest city of India, the heat began to oppress us. Up to this time India had been unexpectedly and refreshingly cool, at night even cold. But now it was unpleasantly warm. The heat reminded us of the conundrum: "Why is India, although so hot, the coldest country on the globe?" Answer: "Because the hottest thing in it is chilly" ("chili" is the peppery sauce which the natives mix with other spices to form "curry"). We have ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... the long service Was over at last, He would wait at the Vestibule door till she passed; And then she would stop on her way from the pew, And propound a conundrum, which he never knew, For she asked him ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... replies, which rather contain highly respectable but perfectly irrelevant commonplaces than definite proposals. Most Socialists will answer the plain question of confiscation or no confiscation with a quibble or a conundrum, as the following examples will show: "One view of Socialism is that it is a scheme of confiscation of property from one class to give it to another class—that Socialists are Dick Turpins made respectable by using Acts ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... He was truly a conundrum, she decided, and difficult to know. Yet how kind he had been to her and careful of her child! for that she would always be grateful. But for him, anything might have happened! Strange fellow!—why was he so antagonistic to ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... likes old Jeffords, an' considers him a pleasin' conundrum. About tenth drink time he'd take a cha'r an' go camp by himse'f in a far corner, an' thar he'd warble hymns. Many a time as I files away my nosepaint in the Oriental have ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... which indicate too early roused young womanhood. The eventual reply seemed to be affirmative, albeit accompanied with a suppressed giggle, as if the young lady had just been discovered as an answer to an amusing conundrum. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... This social conundrum was too much for the millionaire, and he lapsed into heavy silence, to be presently broken ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... a busy man myself, and thought little more of Hewitt's conundrum for some time; indeed, when I did think, I saw no way to the answer. A week after the inquest I took a holiday (I had written my nightly leaders regularly every day for the past five years), and saw no more of Hewitt for ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... in the House of Commons, after congratulating him on his present enviable position, finished the confab with the following unrivalled conundrum:—"By the bye, which of your vegetables does your Tamworth speech resemble!"—"Spinach," replied Peel, who, no doubt, associated it with gammon.—"Pshaw," said the gallant Colonel, "your rope inions (your opinions), to be sure!" Peel opened his mouth, and never ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... complete his statement of the case he was politely asked if he would care to inter his talents in the Canadian Senate, and he suavely answered that such a thing might be a good way to solve the conundrum, even though it would make a thoroughly stupid last ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... didn't amount to more than asking question as to whether audiences at unlicensed places of entertainment (in neighbourhood of Tottenham Court Road or elsewhere) open for Radical or Liberal entertainments, are duly protected from fire? Members went off to dinner, pondering on this conundrum. Came back to find Mr. G. on his legs again, denouncing proposition to vote L20,000 for survey of railway from Mombasa to Nyanza. A splendid piece of invective; almost literally shrivelled up poor JOKIM, at whom some of the scorching flame was pointed with outstretched forefinger. For more ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... asked a conundrum, Miss Carter, and you're the one person who can tell me the true answer. Am I permitted to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... boy, here is a conundrum for you: Of which of the venerable men of the past does ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... him all right, and are more than surprised to see him with a party of strangers, heading upstream. Now, I wonder if they were sent out to look for a fellow of his description? Gee, but this is a conundrum, all right," whispered Cuthbert to his fellow paddler, at which Eli grunted and ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... fully able to answer the conundrum, did not see fit to do so; and hence, on the 3d of November, the same parties deployed their forces to renew ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... feet the most obedient of your slaves, ma'am!' he cried. 'To hear was to obey, to obey was to fly! If it's Pitt's diamond you need, or Lady Mary's soap-box, or a new conundrum, or—hang it all! I cannot think of anything else, but command me! I'll forth and get it, stap me if ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... of here is my own personal quest, for all the time I was living with my mind turned two ways. In the morasses of the Haanebeek flats, in the slimy support lines at Zonnebeke, in the tortured uplands about Flesquieres, and in many other odd places I kept worrying at my private conundrum. At night I would lie awake thinking of it, and many a toss I took into shell-holes and many a time I stepped off the duckboards, because my eyes were on a different landscape. Nobody ever chewed a few wretched clues into such a pulp as I did during those bleak months ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... hear Archimedes' conundrum, Like enough you'll be wanting to try Whether one little girl contra mundum Can't lift the old thing ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... one," says Bobby, doggedly, "I never made out a conundrum in my life, except, 'What is most like a ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... back to his bounds, if he can do so before the king sets his brick and stone up again; but if the King can touch the player after having set his brick up, he is obliged to answer a "Why," or be King instead of him. The "Why" must be proposed by the King, and it may either be a conundrum, or it may contain the reason of any thing, as, "Why does a stone fall to the ground?" "What makes the smoke go up the chimney?" If the player cannot answer the "Why," he is obliged to mind the shy and let the others bowl. ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... stable; another time he gave an elephant a plug of tobacco, and retired without waiting for an answer; and still another time he pretended to be talking in his sleep, and got off a portion of every original conundrum in hearing of his father. He begs the curious not to pry into the result—as it was of no consequence ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... the carefree heartiness of a boy. "I am going to make a riddle," he said. "Prepare yourself; this is the first conundrum of the new world. Why is it better to disagree than ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... tempted to discern some shadow before of the fatality four years later, when the patronage by Essex and his partisans of the play of Henry IV at the Globe Theatre became an article of indictment. The passage forms a conundrum to which the clue has not yet been found. If the reference be to Shakespeare's drama which Essex, Cecil, and Ralegh may have seen acted in this July, it constitutes the only ascertained association of the hand which could do all and the brain ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... It couldn't be expected, perhaps; but I am still of the impression that this conundrum is gradually working towards a solution in the brain of the Commander-in-Chief. I hope it don't lay heavily there; I wouldn't do anything to distress him. If GOLDWIN SMITH were expounding political ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... "I do"; but I left him to guess whether I meant "I do know" or "I do say!" I quieted my conscientious scruples by remembering that the lieutenant's true name was not Wm. O. but Wm. C.! The baffled officer left very angry, and "Where's Gardner at?" passed into a conundrum. ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... fortunate rise in the water having occurred, he was able to extricate his vessels and begin his retreat down the bayou. He was somewhat perplexed by the silence of the Confederates, from whom he had heard nothing since his mortars silenced their masked batteries. The conundrum was solved by the sound of wood-chopping in the forests ahead, and the discovery shortly after of two heavy logs lying athwart the bayou, and stopping the progress of the vessels. An hour's hard work with axe and saw removed ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... brother of the Marquis of Dulhampton's solicitor. It reached Lake from Tom Twitters, of his club, who kept the Brandon Captain au courant of the town-talk; and it came to Dorcas in a more authentic fashion, though mysteriously, and rather in the guise of a conundrum than of a distinct bit of family intelligence, from no less a person than the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a conundrum which nobody seems to have solved yet, Susan. And I can make only a guess ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sphinxes, and should be quick at guessing riddles. Will Cleopatra or Antony answer my conundrum? When my erudition creates a panic, why am I like those who dwelt about Chemmis, when the tragical ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... his own account, went about the country confronting all comers with the questions, "What are you going to make of your future?" . . . "What is the American Utopia, how much Will is there shaping to attain it?" This, he says, was the conundrum to find an answer to which he crossed the Atlantic, and he is much depressed because he failed in his search. "When one talks to an American of his national purpose he seems a little at a loss"; and when he comes to sum up his conclusions: "What seems ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... foreign circulation with the attenuated numerals of such visible returns as reach him, he is more puzzled in his mind than surfeited in his purse. But the relation of foreign publishers to "home talent" is an ancient and honorable conundrum, which it is not for this paper or its writer ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... sir," said Chatfield. "I'm obliged to you. Mr. Copplestone, sir, doesn't yet understand that there's a deal of conundrum in life. He'll know better—some day. He'll know, too, that the poet spoke truthful when he said that things isn't ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... set me a conundrum—a mighty stiff one. It seems that Miss Betty Vivian has lost a parcel, and she be that fretted about it that she's nigh to death, and the little uns have promised to get it back for her; and, poor children! they've set me on the job, and how ever I'm ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... good effect upon the unborn generation, whose parents had not then entered the matrimonial state. Whatever other purpose it subserved, except to show to other communities the "latest novelty" from California, is the unfathomable conundrum. John Crowe was a noisy, blatant, meddlesome fellow, the keeper of a livery stable on Kearny street, and a fierce denouncer of the Committee. There was nothing else to his discredit, so far as I could learn at the time. Reub. Maloney was a compound ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... the examination of the premises, and given up the conundrum, and Christy was leading the way up-stairs. He went into his room, ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... to the government house is the Gymkhana, and I venture to say that nobody who has not been in India can guess what that means. And if you want another conundrum, what is a chotohazree? It is customary for smart people to have their chotohazree at the Gymkhana, and I think that you would be pleased to join them after taking the beautiful drive which leads to ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... Mrs. Somers," said Hilda, "when Archie asked us a conundrum, 'How does a sculptor die?' do you know it? The answer is, 'He makes faces and busts.' And he got so mad when Edna only told him that busts wasn't correct. He ought to say, 'He makes ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... Berkeley, or with Hobbes romance it, Dissecting Truth with metaphysic lancet. Or, drawn from up these dark unfathom'd wells, In wiser folly chink the Cap and Bells. How many tales we told! what jokes we made, Conundrum, Crambo, Rebus, or Charade; nigmas that had driven the Theban mad, And Puns, these best when exquisitely bad; And I, if aught of archer vein I hit, With my own ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... believed that poor perplexed Dumps viewed the midnight apparition with silent surprise, and wagged his tail, being friendly; then gazed at the lamp after the apparition had retired, until obliged to give the subject up, like a difficult conundrum, and finally went to sleep— perchance ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... is just the thing to entertain a party of young girls. Have the tables on the porch. At each plate have a cluster of flowers answering a conundrum. Give each girl a card containing the conundrum and ask her to find her place at the table by the flower answering the questions. These questions will not be hard for a hostess to arrange and will of course depend on the flowers she can secure. Here are a few sample ones given at a recent breakfast: ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... life. A friend of mine once called her a social pirate, and there is no doubt that her method of collecting the people whom she wants is to besiege them until they eventually surrender. Why, however, Bobbie Outram is always asked to her smartest week-ends was a conundrum to me until I met her magnificently convalescing after influenza at Folkestone. For I know Bobbie, and I would run a mile or two any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... what to do for the best in this case. Mebby Solomon knew enough to grapple with the question, but Josiah don't, nor Arvilly, though she thinks she duz. Robert Strong is gittin' one answer to the hard conundrum of life, and Ernest White is figurin' it out successful. And lots of other good and earnest souls all over the world are workin' away at the sum with their own slates and pencils. But oh, the time is long! One needs the patience ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... real and imminent, not to be averted by human means, and yet hardly supernatural—here was a conundrum indeed! ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and he was out of business himself. And he wanted Donald to keep still too. What motive had he for wishing his proposition to be kept in the dark? His object was not apparent, and Donald was obliged to give up the conundrum, though he had some painful doubts on the subject. As he thought of the matter, he turned to observe the position of the two boats to the southward of him. Directly ahead of Laud's craft was an island which he could not weather, and he was obliged ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... a conundrum? If he interests you at a distance (and I take for granted that what you say in your letters is not merely conventional compliment) you can think how piquant he is in actual life. I must confess, however, that ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... could use them for social purposes during the Christmas party season. I do not know how it may be with others, but I have often found, when introduced to a lady, that I have said "Good evening," and then had absolutely nothing else to say. With the help of the conundrum book I would fill in any awkward pause by asking her who was the most amiable king in history. That would break the ice. Besides, if we kept the book reasonably clean, it might afterward make a very serviceable and acceptable present ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... contemptuously. "It seems as if life was always to be a losing game for me, let me play my cards how I will. I begin to think there is a curse upon me, and that no act of mine will ever prosper. Who was that man, in your Greek play, who guessed some inane conundrum, and was always getting into trouble afterwards? I begin to think there really is a fatality ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... "Are you a conundrum? Or a fiend? Or a metaphysical system? And if so, why do you wear a pink frock! Are you a young woman who prefers a dead poet to a living husband? Are you a young woman at all? Or only a dear little, sweet little, pink little ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... standing conundrum with all the women. They will not accept Ethel Newcome even. Perhaps we shall have to admit that Thackeray ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that it demanded from its creator no depth of sentiment, no warmth of emotion, and no large understanding of human desire. There are those who would dismiss it carelessly, as making an appeal not far removed from that of the riddle and of the conundrum. There are those again who would liken it rather to the adroit trick of a clever conjurer. No doubt, it gratifies in us chiefly that delight in difficulty conquered, which is a part of the primitive play-impulse potent in us all, but tending to die out as we grow older, ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... your theory of a picture, then? I don't care what you call it. My only anxiety, when you got a plain, simple, every-day conundrum like Miss Maybough to paint, was that you would try to paint the answer instead of the conundrum, and I dare say that's the trouble. You've been trying to give something more of her character than you found in her face; ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... us'd, Incorporated in the ink and wax. Besides, he gave me nothing, but still fed me With hopes and blows: and that was the inducement To this conundrum. If it please your worship To call to memory, this mad beast once caus'd me To urge you to drown or hang yourself; I'll do the like to him if ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... not welcome the works of HAWLEY SMART, the brightest of our novelists? This is not a conundrum, and, consequently, has no answer. Everybody likes the books of our literary Major, and everybody will be pleased with The Plunger. The new Story is in two volumes, and is full of incident. There is a murder, which carries one through, from the first page to the last, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... CONUNDRUM (a word of unknown origin, probably coined in burlesque imitation of scholastic Latin, as "hocus-pocus" or "panjandrum"), originally a term meaning whim, fancy or ridiculous idea; later applied to a pun or play upon words, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... be a rather unanswerable kind of conundrum. We discussed the problem as we roamed the wood, and Dan and Peter almost quarrelled over it, Dan maintaining that the thing was impossible, and Peter being of the opinion that the mush was somehow "made thicker" ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... refraining from so much as a glance at the boiled milk preparations of the butler. "And you know," said Mrs. Barberry, recountant, "how these people have to be watched." To Mrs. Barberry she was really a conundrum, only to be solved on the theory of a perfectly preposterous delicacy. There was so little that was preposterous in Miss Livingstone's conduct as a rule that it is not quite fair to explain her attitude either ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... tempered by regret in the soft ruche.... She would have been a problem and a poem; while I, in my cheerful reds, my dazzling white, my decisive short skirts, my piquant shoes, my audacious apron, am a conundrum, a pleasantry, an epigram." This would be very pretty on the stage, but a waiting-maid who calls herself an "epigram" passes our imagination under any other circumstances. In fact, Miss Howard seems to us to be altogether on a false tack in this novel,—to have utterly abandoned realism, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... close of this remark all four came to be again on the same terms as of old; but suddenly a servant announced that the Empress (Yan Ch'un) had despatched a messenger to bring over a lantern-conundrum with the directions that they should all go and guess it, and that after they had found it out, they should each also devise one and send it in. At these words, the four of them left the room with ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... good deal overlooked in various ways, she has come to be almost the topic of the age, and strangely enough is she considered. According to the standpoint of the observer, woman is a riddle to be solved, a conundrum to be guessed, a puzzle to be interpreted, a mystery to be explained, a problem to be studied, a paradox to be reconciled. She is a toy or a drudge, a mistress or a servant, a queen or a slave, as circumstances ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... old conundrum—black and white and red all over," Gertrude said. "I never saw anything so stunning ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... association may be set free by the temperature of a burning building and get together. In respect to the old conundrum, "Will saltpetre explode?" Mr. A. A. Hayes, Prof. Silliman, and Dr. Hare's views were, as to the explosions in the New York fire of 1845, that in a closed building having niter in one part and shellac ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... Janice, though from the doctor or her loquacious landlady she heard of how Burgoyne's force, advancing from Canada, had captured Ticonderoga, and of how Sir William had put the flower of his army on board of transports and gone to sea, his destination thus becoming a sort of national conundrum affording infinite opportunity for the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... imagined the noises, why did she not imagine other things; why, for example, did she not see tables dance, and tea-urns walk? All that would be fancy, unblushing, genuine fancy, and if she conjured up one absurdity, why not another! That was a conundrum for any sceptic. Thus did she argue, naturally and logically, in the quite sensible fashion of a lawyer, or a scientist; yet, all the while, her senses told her that the atmosphere of the house had undergone some profoundly subtle and unaccountable change,—a change that brought with it a presence, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... set his mind at rest, in the full conviction that his spiritual guides had found a law which authorized his ancestors, and the tzars and their descendants, and millions of men, to serve as he was doing himself, and that the question I had put him was a kind of hoax or conundrum on ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... from the society of harlequin and the tumblers, and met the world as an independent institution. Singers organized themselves into quartet bands; added a fiddle and tambourine to their instruments—perhaps we should say implements—of music; introduced the hoe-down and the conundrum to fill up the intervals of performance; rented halls, and, peregrinating from city to city and from town to town, went ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... tree. How Green the Tree is! Can you See the Lightning? Oh, how red and Vivid the Lightning is! Will the Lightning Strike the Tree? Children, that is a Conundrum; we answer conundrums in our Weekly Edition, but not ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... why a puling infant divines its mother among the motley and multitudinous mass of sibilant saints at a sewing society which is discussing the last wedding and the next divorce. He "who admits only what he understands" would have to look on himself as a conundrum and then give the conundrum up. He would have the longest doubts and the shortest creed on record. Agnosticism is part of the smashed crockery of the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... The question for you, my dear Lord, is—Will you disappoint them?" Lord Beaconsfield put his glass in his eye, fixed his gaze on Lord Odo, and then said, "There is much force in what you say. I will consider the point." And next day he opened the proceedings in English. Now the psychological conundrum is this—Did he swallow the flattery, and honestly believe that the object of Lord Odo's appeal was to secure the pleasure of hearing him speak English? Or did he see through the manoeuvre, and recognize ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... exasperating to the others, who desired to sleep. Not content with upsetting the fire-irons occasionally, singing to the cat, and slamming the furniture about, this restless bird kept appearing first at one cell door with a conundrum, then at the other with a joke, or insisted on telling funny stories in her den, till the exhausted victims implored her to take an opium pill and subside before they became furious. She obeyed, and after a few relapses into ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... northerly point of the Berlin Archipelago, he may be wrong in quite a variety of ways, but even if he answered correctly he would still know just as little about the matter, while if he were to give the only proper reply to so ridiculous a conundrum, he would tell his tormentor that he did not care a rap where it was, that he had not put it there, and that he would tell his mother if the man did not leave him alone. What has he got to do with Labrador, Terra del Fuego, or the Isles of Greece? Give him a fistful of facts about Donnybrook, and ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... know nothing, learn to conduct the conversation so that you abstract the necessary enlightenment from the questioner himself (while appearing to be perfectly conversant with what he is talking about), and, if possible, get him to suggest the answer to his own conundrum. In other words, bluff as in poker (which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... received a letter from Tyler, Texas, propounding the following fateful conundrum: "Can Woman Hypnotize Man?" My correspondent adds that "by answering, the ICONOCLAST will confer a favor on the people of Tyler, decide a bet and settle ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... held her pretty head on one side, considering, as she looked down into the little girl's upturned face. "Is this a conundrum, Tillie? How your father be in Lancaster now and yet be home until half-past three? It's uncanny. Unless," she added, a ray of light coming to her,—"unless 'till' means BY. Your father will be home BY half-past three and ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... Speaking at Manchester I used these words:— "If in the inconstant ferment of their minds The KING'S advisers can indeed discover No surer ground of principle than this; If we have here their final contribution To the most clamant and profound conundrum Ever proposed for statesmanship to solve, Then are we watching at the bankruptcy Of all that wealth of intellect and power Which has made England great. If that be true We may put FINIS to our history. But I for one will never lend my suffrage ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... conundrum," said Yates, ticking off the items on his four fingers. "First, Monday is washing day. Second, this is not Monday. Third, neither is to-morrow. Fourth, we are preparing for washing. I give it up, Miss Bartlett. Please ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr |
