Henry Dudeney
| Henry Dudeney | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Henry Ernest Dudeney 10 April 1857 Mayfield, East Sussex, England |
| Died | 24 April 1930 (aged 73) Lewes, Sussex, England |
| Cause of death | Throat cancer |
| Nationality | British |
| Known for | Puzzles, mathematical games |
Henry Ernest Dudeney (10 April 1857 – 23 April 1930) was an English author and mathematician who specialised in logic puzzles and mathematical games. He is known as one of the country's foremost creators of mathematical puzzles.
Dudeney was born in the village of Mayfield, East Sussex, England, one of six children of Gilbert and Lucy Dudeney. His grandfather, John Dudeney, was well known as a self-taught mathematician and shepherd; his initiative was much admired by his grandson. Dudeney learned to play chess at an early age, and continued to play frequently throughout his life. This led to a marked interest in mathematics and the composition of puzzles. Chess problems in particular fascinated him during his early years.
Although Dudeney spent his career in the Civil Service, he continued to devise various problems and puzzles. Dudeney's first puzzle contributions were submissions to newspapers and magazines, often under the pseudonym of "Sphinx." Much of this earlier work was a collaboration with American puzzlist Sam Loyd; in 1890, they published a series of articles in the English penny weekly Tit-Bits.
Dudeney later contributed puzzles under his real name to publications such as The Weekly Dispatch, The Queen, Blighty, and Cassell's Magazine. For twenty years, he had a successful column, "Perplexities", in The Strand Magazine, edited by the former editor of Tit-Bits, George Newnes. Dudeney continued to exchange puzzles with fellow recreational mathematician Sam Loyd for a while, but broke off the correspondence and accused Loyd of stealing his puzzles and publishing them under his own name.
Some of Dudeney's most famous innovations were his 1903 success at solving the Haberdasher's Puzzle (Cut an equilateral triangle into four pieces that can be rearranged to make a square) and publishing the first known crossnumber puzzle, in 1926. He has also been credited with discovering new applications of digital roots. Dudeney was a leading exponent of verbal arithmetic puzzles; his were always alphametic, where the letters constitute meaningful phrases or associated words. Previously, it had been claimed (though not by Dudeney himself) that he was the inventor of verbal arithmetic. This was later refuted by the counter example of a verbal arithmetic puzzle published in the US in 1864. Omission of detailed puzzle rules in the cited farm journal, suggests they were already popular in America by 1864, when Dudeney was 7 years old. The popularity of these puzzles guarantees they'd be well known by then to Sam Loyd, an American puzzler and early Dudeney puzzle collaborator. Loyd has gained notoriety (at the expense of credibility) for his own claims of invention now exposed as false. Loyd even falsely claimed to have invented the verbal arithmetic puzzle. For another example of Loyd's pervasive deceit, see 15 puzzle. Dudeney experienced Loyd's duplicity and intellectual theft first hand, eventually publicly equating Loyd with the Devil.
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