The 1 is here a repeater, and the cycle 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Every one of the 3 groups will give 7 lines. Here is my solution for 9 persons on 28 occasions:-- 2 1 9 7 4 5 6 3 8 2 9 5 1 6 8 3 4 7 2 9 3 1 8 4 7 5 6 2 9 1 5 6 4 7 8 3 There are here two repeaters, 1 and 2, and the cycle is 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. We thus get 4 groups of 7 lines each. The case of 10 persons on 36 occasions is solved as follows:-- 1 10 8 3 6 5 4 7 2 9 1 10 6 5 2 9 7 4 3 8 1 10 2 9 3 8 6 5 7 4 1 10 7 4 8 3 2 9 5 6 The repeater is 1, and the cycle, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. We here have 4 groups of 9 lines each. My solution for 11 persons on 45 occasions is as follows:-- 2 11 9 4 7 6 5 1 8 3 10 2 1 11 7 6 3 10 8 5 4 9 2 11 10 3 9 4 8 5 1 7 6 2 11 5 8 1 3 10 6 7 9 4 2 11 1 10 3 4 9 6 7 5 8 There are two repeaters, 1 and 2, and the cycle is, 3, 4, 5,... 11. We thus get 5 groups of 9 lines each. The case of 12 persons on 55 occasions is solved thus:-- 1 2 3 12 4 11 5 10 6 9 7 8 1 2 4 11 6 9 8 7 10 5 12 3 1 2 5 10 8 7 11 4 3 12 6 9 1 2 6 9 10 5 3 12 7 8 11 4 1 2 7 8 12 3 6 9 11 4 5 10 Here 1 is a repeater, and the cycle is 2, 3, 4, 5,... 12. We thus get 5 groups of 11 lines each. 274.--THE MOUSE-TRAP PUZZLE. If we interchange cards 6 and 13 and begin our count at 14, we may take up all the twenty-one cards--that is, make twenty-one "catches"--in the following order: 6, 8, 13, 2, 10, 1, 11, 4, 14, 3, 5, 7, 21, 12, 15, 20, 9, 16, 18, 17, 19. We may also exchange 10 and 14 and start at 16, or exchange 6 and 8 and start at 19. 275.--THE SIXTEEN SHEEP. The six diagrams on next page show solutions for the cases where we replace 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 hurdles. The dark lines indicate the hurdles that have been replaced. There are, of course, other ways of making the removals. 276.--THE EIGHT VILLAS. There are several ways of solving the puzzle, but there is very little difference between them. The solver should, however, first of all bear in mind that in making his calculations he need only consider the four villas that stand at the corners, because the intermediate villas can never vary when the corners are known. One way is to place the numbers nought to 9 one at a time in the top left-hand corner, and then consider each case in turn. Now, if we place 9 in the corner as shown in the Diagram A, two of the corners cannot be occupied, while the corner that is diagonally opposite may be filled by 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 persons. We thus see that there are 10 [Illustration: +---+---+ +-+-----+ +---+---+ |O OHO O| |OHO O O| |O OHO O| | H | | + | | +=+ | |O OHO O| |OHO O O| |O OHOHO| +-+ +-+-+ +-+-----+ +---+ + | |O|O O|O| |O|O O O| |O O O|O| | +---+ | | +-+-+ | | +-+ | |O O O O| |O O OHO| |O O|O O| +-------+ +-------+ +-------+ 2 3 4