Lewis Carroll gave his pupils puzzles to make logic and mathematics instruction more interesting.   He might have sprung on them the well-known river crossing problem which goes something like this… There was a man who had to get a goat, cabbage, and wolf across the river in a boat too small to hold all four of them. What was he to do? The goat was sure to eat the cabbage if left alone with it and the wolf the goat if given a chance.  With a little quick thinking, the task can be successfully completed.

People have been solving this problem at least since the 12^th century, when an illumination featuring a wolf, a sheep, and a vegetable that looks like kale appears in the Ormesby Psalter.  Since the 12th century, many variations on the river crossing problem have been noted in at different times, places, and sources.

Between 1705 and 1801, there were seventeen occurrences with a fox, a goose, and a bag of oats, five for a fox, a goose, and a bag of wheat, and three for the more familiar goat, cabbage, and wolf.  The majority appeared either in Jacques Ozanam’s famous Recreations for Gentlemen and Ladies or well-established school books like Thomas Dilworth’s Schoolmaster’s Assistant, under the heading “pleasant and diverting questions.”

For some time it seems that the goat, cabbage and wolf puzzler had been simultaneously associated with instruction and amusement.  Yesterday I discovered more evidence for that in an unlikely place, a recent acquisition, Jeux nouveaux reunis dating from around 1904.  Four or five Parisian companies involved in making pastimes seem to have partnered to produce a big wooden chest shown below stuffed with 64 entertaining pastimes individually boxed. Le souci du batelier: question du vieux tempts [The boatman’s problem] is the only logic puzzler to be found among all the dexterity and disentanglement puzzles.   The box contains a printed slip with the solution and figures of the goat, cabbage, and wolf on little wire stands and the boatman.

Players who couldn’t work it out in their heads could experiment with the figures plotting a sequence of trips across the river  that  would  preserve  cabbage  and  goat.It’s been speculated that the Jeux nouveaux reunis was a salesman’s sample.  Jerry  Slocum, the great historian and collector of puzzles shows in Puzzles Old and New that dexterity and disentanglement puzzles became an increasingly popular family entertainment in  early twentieth century.  He photographs the box of his copy of  Puzzle Parties (1911) sold by a Connecticut firm which contains many of the same French puzzles in the box Cotsen acquired.  Perhaps boxes were sold in France for puzzle parties as well as for sale overseas.