Lewis Carroll recommended keeping a good store of mental agility puzzles as a remedy against tormenting thoughts.
ByLewis Carroll1832-1898
Lewis Carroll1832-1898
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898, real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was an English mathematician, Anglican deacon, and pioneering photographer. He spent his career lecturing in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, where he befriended the Liddell family. An impromptu river trip with young Alice Liddell inspired his masterpieces, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871). Carroll revolutionised children’s literature by abandoning didactic moralising in favour of subversive logic, surreal wordplay, and pure imagination, profoundly influencing modern fantasy and absurdist fiction.
Alexander Borodin: Nocturn — Andantino(Click to expand video player)
In 1893, Lewis Carroll published a little book of Pillow-Problems, a collection of mental agility puzzles in logic and mathematics. They were, he said, a capital game to play at night when the day’s anxieties were still buzzing around the mind. It is always better to think of something than to try uselessly to think of nothing.
Précis
Lewis Carroll, author of the much-loved ‘Alice’ books for children, tells us that he often found it difficult to compose himself to sleep at night, owing to unwanted but persistent thoughts. He treated the complaint with what he called ‘pillow problems’, relaxing games with words and numbers. It was a remedy, he said, that was effective not only against anxiety, but even against the dark and unwholesome thoughts that silently afflict even the most upright person.
Perhaps IPerhaps I may venture, for a moment, to use a more serious tone, and to point out that there are mental troubles, much worse than mere worry, for which an absorbing subject of thought may serve as a remedy. There are sceptical thoughts, which seem for the moment to uproot the firmest faith; there are blasphemous thoughts, which dart unbidden into the most reverent souls; there are unholy thoughts, which torture, with their hateful presence, the fancy that would fain be pure. Against all these some real mental work is a most helpful ally. That “unclean spirit” of the parable, who brought back with him seven others more wicked than himself, only did so because he found the chamber “swept and garnished”, and its owner sitting with folded hands: had he found it all alive with the “busy hum” of active work, there would have been scant welcome for him and his seven!
Think and Speak
From a ’Fifties Classroom
01
Doublets
based on the passage above
Carroll called this mental agility game ‘Doublets’, and published an account of it in Vanity Fair in 1879. The aim of the game is to turn one word into another word a single letter at a time. For example, you can change DOG to CAT in 3 steps (not counting the first word) like this: DOG, DOT, COT, CAT. All words must be the same length as the first word, and should (said Carroll) be recognised English words suitable for polite society. The games below were included in his little booklet.
Change PIG to STY in 5 steps.
Change HEAD to TAIL in 5 steps.
Change COMB to HAIR in 6 steps.
Change ARMY to NAVY in 7 steps.
Change FLOUR to BREAD in 6 steps.
I challenge you with a Doublet each day on the Word Games page.
Solutions
These are some of Carroll’s own solutions.
PIG to STY in 5 steps: PIG, PIT, SIT, SAY, STY.
HEAD to TAIL in 5 steps: HEAD, HEAL, TEAL, TELL, TALL, TAIL.
COMB to HAIR in 6 steps: COME, HOME, HOLE, HALE, HALL, HAIL, HAIR.
ARMY to NAVY in 7 steps: ARMS, AIMS, DIMS, DAMS, DAME, NAME, NAVE, NAVY.
FLOUR to BREAD in 6 steps: FLOOR, FLOOD, BLOOD, BROOD, BROAD, BREAD.
Clay Lane is based on textbooks written more than
seventy years ago. If you’re planning to take a
formal test, ask your teacher whether these games
are right for you.
For the Writer In You
A Test of Good Writing
The test of good writing is a simple one. If a sentence puzzles or startles you, pull it to pieces. If it is good writing, then the harder you pull, the more tightly you will discover it to be woven together, and the more closely you examine it, the more meaning it will yield. But if it tumbles to bits easily — if you find its syntax dislocated, its epithets imprecise, its meaning vague or contradictory — then it is bad, and should be quickly thrown into the dustbin of oblivion; one should not keep rubbish lying about in the house of the mind.
Dorothy L. Sayers, ‘Plain English’, in Unpopular Opinions (1946)
