A religious man’s rich uncle leaves him a valuable bequest—if he can solve a puzzle, finding in a list of six cities the “one and only East.”
I must admit to liking this puzzle, for all that it turns on an incredibly obscure point of early American history (although anybody who had paid attention while reading The Shaping of North America should be able to get it). On the other hand, Henry’s technique for solving this particularly Gordian knot is delightfully straightforward—he looks the six cities up in a reference book and sees which of them has something “eastern” associated with it. Any reader who thought to use this simple technique would have no trouble getting the puzzle, no matter how much or little they know of colonial history.
Anyway, despite the fact that I myself had no chance at all of ever solving this one, I like it anyway.
