Further Puzzles of Love and Passion

Marital Machinations

Victor and Vivian adored each other exceedingly and, additionally, were mature sophisticates. It would be correct, therefore, to assume that they did not let their being married interfere with their enjoyment of each other's company -- even though they weren't married to each other. Being of vigorous dispositions they had, in fact, worked out a discreet daily rendezvous which went like this:

In the morning, when Vivian's husband went to work, she waited a while and then called him at his office on the pretext of wishing him good day (she was a late sleeper -- as so many fulfilled women are -- and never saw him before evening, except on weekends). Once satisfied that he was, indeed, at his desk, she hopped in the car, drove to an appointed street corner, picked up her paramour, and drove him at a moderate, uniform rate of speed (they couldn't afford to be involved in an accident) to her house, where they did what came naturally to both of them. Later (after a hearty luncheon of black caviar with grated onion and chopped hard-boiled egg, washed down with iced vintage champagne) she drove Victor back to his office, where he attacked the day's labors relaxed and refreshed. The routine never varied -- Victor and Vivian were punctual to a fault.

Except for one Monday, Vivian's husband had been rude enough to develop a cold the previous midweek and had remained at home, where Vivian danced murderously courteous attendance upon him. Thus the lovers were deprived of their pleasure for five days. On Monday morning the despised husband went to work as usual and Vivian at once notified Victor that their accustomed meeting would be held at the accustomed time and place and that she would start out at the accustomed hour. He, poor chap, by this time was the victim of considerable psycho-sexual pressure -- so much so, in fact, that he left the rendezvous street corner exactly one hour earlier than the designated meeting time and started walking toward Vivian's house, knowing that she always followed the same route and that they would thus meet somewhere along the way. And so they did, and promptly turned around and proceeded to Vivian's duplex, where they arrived exactly 15 minutes earlier than they would have if he'd met her as planned. To their dismay, her husband confronted them. A morbidly suspicious man, he had hired detectives to provide him full details of his wife's perfidy. But his excess of self-righteousness was too much on top of his recent illness and he fell down dead.

Later, Vivian received the bill from the detective agency. Understandably predisposed against it, she found some of the charges exorbitant, particularly the one for the detective who followed Victor on that crucial morning.

"I'm sure they're overcharging us, dear," Vivian said. "He only followed you from our usual meeting place to where I picked you up. How long did it take you to walk that far?"

"Figure it out for yourself," said Victor, who had grown restive of late, "I've got an appointment." And he was out the door.

Perhaps you will be a little kinder to our bereaved widow and come up with the answer for her.

A Brimming Saga

It is, from time to time, an author's sad duty to report an event with veracity at the cost of distressing readers. Such, alas, is the unadorned story of unrequited love recounted herewith.

No one could have been happier at heart than Harry when he and Marylin -- a gorgeous doll with whom he'd been able to make no time whatever, despite many days in her company on a cruise ship, during which he'd plied her with the three Bs, i.e., blandishments, booze, bijous -- were shipwrecked on a desert island. Just the two of them.

"You know," said Harry, when they'd swum ashore with nothing to sustain them but a canister of fresh water, "we'll probably die of hunger or thirst before we're rescued. While we have our strength, wouldn't it be the sensible thing to taste of the pleasures our short lives still have in store for us? So come 'ere!"

"Down, boy -- down!" said Marylin. "Not so fast. In days of old, knights performed feats to win fair damsels and for old time's sake I think I'll ask the same of you."

Harry got his tongue back in his mouth and gamely asked her to name it. "OK," she said, "here's this cylindrical can full of water. Since it won't last us long anyway, I'll ask you to kindly pour out half of it -- but exactly, mathematically, half. There's a way to do it, if you know how, as I do, but it's not my intention to tell you. So start figuring; I'm going to take a nap."

Harry started figuring. He had nothing to measure with. He sat there as the sun went down and he thought and thought all through the starry night. At dawn, he cried "Eureka!" (for old time's sake) because he had the solution. But then he just cried, because a rescue vessel touched the beach as he wakened Marylin to claim her as his prize.

Once aboard, Marylin asked, "What's the procedure?"

He parried with, "If I tell you will you yield?"

"No," she said, "this ain't no desert island, Bub, and those ole desert-island rules don't hold."

We told you this was a sad story. Now you tell us Harry's method.

An Oxonian Tragedy

Shakespeare it was who said the course of true love never runs without a modicum of turbulence, and such was the case with the passion that briefly flamed between Peter and Wendy. They loved each other madly that fine spring when she came up from London to visit him at his digs in Oxford. But he, fickle swain, soon tired of her endearments for, to put it bluntly, he doubted he could ever give her all she wanted. In fact, when fellow scholars would stop him on the common and greet him with the usual Oxonian (or is it Cantabridgian?) query, "You gettin' any, boy?" he would answer with a weak grin, the while wishing he weren't getting quite so much.

It befell one day that while poring over manuscripts in the library of his collegium, Peter happened on An American Tragedy, by the late Theodore Dreiser, the story, you recall, of a youth who plotted to rid himself of an enciente lass by submerging her in a lake on which they'd be boating. When Peter dug this tale, he sat back in thought and then, just like in those quaint Ameddican comic strips, a light bulb appeared over his head with the word "idea" in it. Next morning he invited Wendy to go punting on the Thames. Once aboard, he punted strongly upcurrent and passed under a bridge. One mile further on, as he passed under the next bridge, he urged Wendy to lean over the side and glance at her reflection in the water. As she did so, he thwacked her smartly on the noggin with the punt pole and over she went.

Peter kept right on punting, but now misgivings stirred within him. "What, will these hands never be clean?" he asked himself and, more to the point, "Maybe I was hasty -- I have no other doll lined up yet." So, after continuing on his way from the second, or fateful, bridge for 10 minutes, he turned 'round and punted with equal energy downstream, overtaking Wendy's limp form just as it drifted under the first bridge. There he tenderly hauled her back into the punt, revived her and, as she opened her eyes, asked her (since he figured she ought to know from recent personal experience) the same question we're going to ask you, to wit: "What was the speed of the current?"

Answers to Puzzles on page 78

Answers to Puzzles on Page 32

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Marital Machinations. By walking, Victor saved 15 minutes driving time (since they arrived at Vivian's 15 minutes earlier than usual) or 7 1/2 minutes in each direction from the point where he was picked up to their customary rendezvous point and back again. Vivian, therefore, met him 7 1/2 minutes before the appointed time. Since Victor started walking one hour before the appointed time, he walked a total of 52 1/2 minutes.

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A Brimming Saga. Harry correctly figured he'd keep pouring until the surface of the water simultaneously touched one edge of the brim and the opposite junction of bottom and side.

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An Oxonian Tragedy. Wendy decided that if V = Peter's speed in still water and C = speed of the current, then V -- C is his speed upstream and V + C his speed downstream. Thus, when she went overboard, they began separating at (V -- C) + C = V. When Peter turned, he went V + C, Wendy continuing at C, so he approached her at (V + C) -- C = V. Since their parting and reunion were at the same speed, he must have expended the same time on both, or 10 minutes on each. So Wendy drifted one mile in 20 minutes, or a speed of three mph, which is not bad for a young girl who's not really giving it the old college try.