How Old Is Ann?
This article explores the historical cultural phenomenon of a 1903 arithmetical puzzle involving the ages of two characters, Mary and Ann. It traces the puzzle's spread through newspapers, stage plays, and songs of the early 20th century.
Why it matters
It provides a fascinating look at how viral content and public obsession functioned in the pre-digital era.
From “Topics of the Times,” New York Times of 1924-11-17:
The amount and quality of intelligence utilized in the working out of cross-word puzzles almost precisely equal those that were revealed some years ago when an amazing — and discouraging — army of Americans filled the newspapers that cater to such folk with triumphant solutions of an arithmetical problem concerning the age of a supposititious Ann — a problem that any eighth-grade boy or girl who is “all there” should have solved in his or her head in about thirty seconds.
The older I get, the more sense it makes when the phrase “some years ago” turns out to refer to something from two decades back. The problem, apparently first published in the New York World circa 1903-10-09, [1] goes like this:
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