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In 1875, a New York publisher named Frank M. Reed put out a collection of “enigmas, anagrams, charades, square words, … picture problems, transpositions, etc., etc.” under the title The American Sphinx.
As its long-winded subtitle might suggest, the book contained dozens of different kinds of logic, word, number, and picture puzzles, as well as a handful of more straightforward riddles and rebuses. The verse puzzle below is just one of these—can you work out what five-letter word is being described here?
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