Samuel Loyd as portrayed by a student from the Immaculate Conception School of
Jamaica Estates, NY.
Hello my name is Samuel Loyd but you can call me Sam. I was born on January 31, 1841 in Philadelphia. By the time I was three we had moved to New York and while at school I joined the Chess Club and became fascinated with the game. At the age of fourteen, my first chess problem was published in the New York Saturday Courier, April 14th, 1855. Within a year I was recognized as the best chess-problem designer in the country.
I began to study engineering, intending to become a steam and mechanical engineer, but found I could make a living from my skills at puzzles and chess problems and began to develop more unusual puzzles.
By 1870 I had become more interested in composing mathematical puzzles than chess problems. I composed a famous problem consisting of three cards, two with the picture of a horse and the third with a picture of two jockeys. The puzzle was to rearrange the pieces so that the jockeys were riding the horses. I sold it to the showman P T Barnum and it became famous as P T Barnum's Trick Donkey.
I drove the entire world crazy with a little box of movable blocks known as the "14-15 Puzzle". The fifteen blocks were arranged in the square box in rectangular order, but with the 14 and 15 reversed as shown. The puzzle consisted of moving the blocks about, one at a time, to bring them back to the present position in every respect except that the error in the 14 and 15 was to be corrected. I offered a prize of $1000 for the first correct solution to the problem and it has never been claimed. People became infatuated with the puzzle and ludicrous tales are told of shopkeepers who neglected to open their stores; of a distinguished clergyman who stood under a street lamp all through a wintry night trying to recall the way he had performed the feat. Pilots are said to have wrecked their ships, and engineers rushed their trains past stations. Farmers were known to have deserted their ploughs.
I produced over 10000 puzzles in my lifetime many involving sophisticated mathematical ideas and became known as America�s Puzzle King.
Presented May 22, 2004 by The Richmond Hill Historical Society, Maple Grove Cemetery, and The Immaculate Conception School of Jamaica Estates, NY (Dr. Charlene Jaffie, principal).
Copyright © 2004 Carl Ballenas & Nancy Cataldi.
No claim to Old Kew Gardens [.com] color photograph.
No claim to Old Kew Gardens [.com] color photograph.
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