What 'Pyrgic' means...

Over the last 30 years, since The Pyrgic Puzzler was published and The Guardian started to run what was to become the weekly column Pyrgic Puzzles (now accompanied by its sister column Wordplay), I have often been asked what the word Pyrgic means and how this title came about.

Those with access to a dictionary that is compendious enough have been able to discover for themselves that the word is associated with πύργος or pyrgos, which is the Greek word for a tower, and is found in, for example, Homer; and so it means of, about or suitable for a tower.

 


But how did the name come to be associated with bendy and anti-intuitive puzzles?

It is curious that a book that has so completely transformed my life and which The Evening Standard— perhaps over-generously— claims has changed the face of puzzle-writing, was not written for publication at all, but as a diverting travelling companion for a friend.

An academic acquaintance of mine from Oxford was due to fly to Lesvos to spend two weeks in a tower of the kind that the inhabitants of that island still call a Pyrgos. Now my friend is not a good traveller: no sooner has he arrived somewhere than he wishes himself back home. As the date of departure approached he became more and more anxious.

At that time I was teaching physics and maths remedially to pupils who had failed their A-levels, though to be fair they had first been failed by the educational system. The lessons were gruelling for tutor and pupils alike: there is nothing more laborious than to have to harrow up badly misconstrued ideas and replace them with more logical concepts: it is easier to teach a subject from scratch.

Also nothing that anyone said was to be taken at face value: it had to be established or proved from fundamental principles. Only in this way was it easy to tell with any efficiency whether a pupil had understood something for himself or was merely claiming to do so. It is the basis for making oneself accountable for the knowledge one holds. I set questions which tested their understanding and I stretched their intellectual self-sufficiency with paradoxes.

It was only fair to allow the pupils to get their own back on such a demanding tutor. It also made it clear that all of us are learners and investigators even if some of us have studied longer. Soon they were hanging around after tutorials setting me brainteasers that they hoped would catch me out. If they succeeded it was an occasion for much glee and mirth. How much more pleasure is occasioned by results that have been worked for and earned.

But puzzling in this way does not only amuse; it also stimulates intellectual curiosity: a state of value in any mental endeavour and one that can so easily be crushed in traditional schooling— especially in maths and physics.

Trading in nit-picky puzzles was also a natural way of learning the value of paying close and critical attention to the form of words used in describing situations and ideas, a sloppiness in which is a sadly widespread impediment to clear and logical thinking.

I had jotted down some of the more entertaining of the brainteasers that we set each other, and it was a collection of these that I now pressed into the hands of my acquaintance as he prepared to fly off to his pyrgos. As these puzzles were set in the familiar world of Oxford he only needed to read one of them to be at once transported home, if only in his imagination.

Thus were the Pyrgic Puzzles born and they were duly transported to Lesvos where they proved a success. On my friend's return they found a home on his coffee table in his rooms in Oxford where he taught philosophy. Diligent pupils were occasionally stymied or rewarded with one of them.

And so matters might have rested had Iris Murdoch not dropped by to visit just as my friend was called away to the telephone. When he returned he found the novelist comfortably ensconced on the sofa deeply absorbed in the puzzles. She told my friend that they should be published and proposed she write an introduction.

After the book came out, the question of what I was to do for a career settled itself. There were newspaper columns, consultations, radio programmes and huge numbers of letters to answer from members of the public correcting, informing, enquiring or just quibbling: all about puzzles.

If my friend had not been called away to the phone at that precise moment, Iris Murdoch might not have picked up the puzzles and I might not have embarked on a life which culminated with an Oxford College appointing me its College Enigmatist (a unique post not unlike that of a medieval court jester, but without any of the attendant political risk). Henceforth my work would be play; and my play would be work.

The book was subsequently translated into Italian, Greek, Polish and even American, where it was felt that the over-alliterative title Professor Percival Pinkerton's Perplexing Puzzles would somehow convey more of the spirit of the book to the buyer than the original title, despite the fact that no character called Pinkerton is ever alluded to in the text of the book.

Now the book that started it all is to be reissued this autumn in the United States under its original title by Dover books. It is an honour for The Pyrgic Puzzler to find a new home in the country which gave birth among others to the great puzzlist Sam Loyd, the late-lamented Martin Gardner, and logician Ray Smullyan. I hope the puzzles will amuse and transport American readers just as they once did my academic friend in his tower on Lesvos and the many readers of the weekly column in The Guardian.

                                                                                      Picture by

                                                                            Michael James Harrington