Games & puzzlesOn the Valice list
1857–1930
One of the foremost creators of mathematical puzzles in English.
On the Valice list. One title published by Valice Press carries Henry E. Dudeney’s work; it is below.
Biography
English puzzle-maker (1857–1930). A Civil Service clerk from the age of thirteen, he wrote puzzles for The Strand Magazine for more than thirty years and published The Canterbury Puzzles (1907) and Amusements in Mathematics (1917). The Haberdasher's four-piece triangle and the spider and the fly are his.
Works
Timeline
1884
Married Alice Whiffin, who became a well-known novelist as Mrs Henry Dudeney.
1890
With the American puzzler Sam Loyd, published a series of puzzle articles in the penny weekly Tit-Bits; the collaboration later ended in a quarrel, Dudeney accusing Loyd of publishing his puzzles as his own.
1902
Devised the haberdasher's puzzle, a hinged rearrangement of an equilateral triangle into a square.
1907
Published The Canterbury Puzzles.
1926
Published what is believed to be the first crossnumber puzzle.
1930
Died of throat cancer at Lewes.
Why they are here
Dudeney spent his working life in the Civil Service and wrote his puzzles on the side — first under the pseudonym "Sphinx", then under his own name — for newspapers and magazines, including a column called "Perplexities" in The Strand Magazine that ran for twenty years. His books remain the model of the logical, story-wrapped puzzle.
The haberdasher's puzzle is a standard example of a hinged dissection, and he is credited with the first known crossnumber puzzle and with new uses of digital roots. His alphametic puzzles, in which the letters spell real words, are still copied.
On the Valice list
Nearby on the shelf
These are Valice Press titles from the same part of the library. They are not by Henry E. Dudeney, and they are not a recommendation on Henry E. Dudeney’s behalf — only the same shelf.
100 Myth Puzzles from 19 Civilizations
Emre Doğan
63 Games from 5,000 Years of Human Play — Rules, Boards and Stories from 42 Cultures, Ready to Play Tonight
Emre Doğan
One Hundred Engraved Enigmas and a Single Unbroken Mystery — A Puzzle Book Bound as a Grimoire
Emre Doğan
60 Games That Need Nothing but a Pencil — with Where Each One Came From and How to Win
Emre Doğan
Related authors
Sources
Everything on this page about Henry E. Dudeney is written from these sources, not from memory. Their dates and key claims were checked against the sources on 8 October 2026.The life dates are compared across Wikidata and the Library of Congress’s authority records.
