Loading...Nobody goes to St Ives
Once this was a math puzzle, now it’s a Covid-19 rule. Go figure.
As I was going to St Ives,
I met a man with seven wives;
Every wife had seven sacks,
Every sack had seven cats,
Every cat had seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks and wives,
How many were going to St Ives?
BTW – The last line contains the trick question. Is the
narrator the only person on his way ‘to’ St Ives, or not?
This interpretation provided the basis for a verse reply from “Philo-Rhithmus” of Edinburgh
Why the deuce do you give yourselves so much vexation,
And puzzle your brains with a long calculation
Of the number of cats, with their kittens and sacks,
Which went to St Ives, on the old women’s backs,
As you seem to suppose? — Don’t you see that the cunning
Old Querist went only? — The rest were all coming.
But grant the wives went too, — as sure’s they were married,
Eight only could go, — for the rest were all carried.