During a Nelson celebration I was standing in Trafalgar Square with a friend of puzzling proclivities. He had for some time been gazing at the column in an abstracted way, and seemed quite unconscious of the casual remarks that I addressed to him.
"What are you dreaming about?" I said at last.
"Two feet——" he murmured.
"Somebody's Trilbys?" I inquired.
"Five times round——"
"Two feet, five times round! What on earth are you saying?"
"Wait a minute," he said, beginning to figure something out on the back of an envelope. I now detected that he was in the throes of producing a new problem of some sort, for I well knew his methods of working at these things.
"Here you are!" he suddenly exclaimed. "That's it! A very interesting little puzzle. The height of the shaft of the Nelson column being 200 feet and its circumference 16 feet 8 inches, it is wreathed in a spiral garland