GoKawiilFrom “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:
Mary is 24 years old. She is twice as old as Ann was when Mary was as old as Ann is now. How old is Ann?
(A writer to the Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser of 1903-10-24 points out that you can get the apparently-most-common wrong answer if you read the puzzle incorrectly as “She was twice as old as Ann was when Mary [sic] was as old as Ann now is.”)
The New York Evening Post (quoted in the Princeton (Minn.) Union) opined:
“Wherever it may have originated — and this is itself a matter of controversy — the problem concerning the ages of Ann and Mary has caught the country’s fancy as few such things have since ‘Pigs in Clover.’ ”
Billboard (1904-02-20): “The question ‘How Old Is Ann?’ has been dramatized and was staged at White Plains. Barney Gerard, the author, makes Ann a mischievous little girl, who refuses to go to school. The school authorities get after her to punish her but must first find out how old she is. Complications result.” • The New York Evening World (1903-11-17): “ ‘How Old Is Ann?’ is the title of a new song which Frank Daniels sang last night at the Victoria Theatre. When the opening lines sounded the audience settled back in its seats with a sigh of relief. ‘At last,’ it meant just as if it was expressed in words, ‘we are going to find out how old that cussed sister of Mary is.’ But they didn’t, and there’s where the fun came in. The song has a rattling chorus and a catchy tune.” • Cartoonist Ed F. Flinn fingered Ann as the cause of the Panamanian secession. • The World of 1903-11-07 “revealed” the perpetrator of the problem as one “Mr. Perkin Warbeck, of Newark, N.J.”
The Philadelphia North American published “the answers of a few leading Philadelphians.”
“I don’t see why that simple question is puzzling anybody. I knew Ann is 12 years old as soon as I saw the problem,” said Frank R. Shattuck. “There is no other solution, I tell you. Look here, I’ll explain it to you. Mary is 24 years old. She is twice as old as Ann — that’s a cinch. Of course, then, Ann is half Mary’s age, or 12 years. There ought to be a comma after ‘Ann,’ though.” It was suggested to Mr. Shattuck that there was no comma in the problem. “Doesn’t make any difference,” replied he promptly. “Let’s see — twice as old as Ann ‘was.’ That ought to be ‘is’ — as Mary was when Ann is. I’m not mixed up. I tell you, Ann is 12.”
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