Education: The Disease

Herbert J. Idle is a wiry, nervous man whose name is anything but apt. In the daytime he is a $410-a-month hydraulic engineer with Chicago's Water Distribution Division. But at night he turns into quite another person. He likes to read dictionaries, goes into ecstasies over the fact that eyen was once the plural of eye and that withy was once a halter. He also composes music, reads through each issue of the National Geographic at least "half a dozen times before it goes into my files." But most of all, Herbert Idle likes to solve puzzles. "It is," says he, "a sort of disease with me."

Over the years, Idle has entered scores of contests. In 1937 he tried for the Old Gold contest, got only a carton of cigarettes for his pains. Later he won a pair of skis, and finally, in 1951, he won $2,000 in Chicago's street-naming contest sponsored by the Sun-Times. But by that time he had already answered an ad, placed in a Chicago paper by Manhattan's Unicorn Press, distributors of the New Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia. Said the ad: "YOU CAN WIN $102,500!!!"

Herbert Idle got his first puzzles in 1950—a set of questions and rebuses that seemed like duck soup. It took him almost no time at all to answer the questions (e.g., "John Alden, one of our Pilgrim Fathers, courted: 1) Jane Addams, 2) Betsy Ross, 3) Barbara Frietchie, 4) Pocahontas, 5) Priscilla Mullins"). Nor did he have much trouble solving the rebuses. Idle worked with care, and as the months went by and more & more rebuses came, his living room began to overflow with dictionaries, reference books and the encyclopedia, which he had to buy volume by volume. Eventually Idle was informed that if he wanted to invest in the encyclopedia's yearbooks, he would be eligible for more money. Plagued by his old disease, Herbert Idle persevered—until he had finally mailed the last batch of rebuses back to the Unicorn Press. Sample rebus (answer is the last name of a German composer):

Last week Herbert Idle, 55, was summoned to Manhattan, told only that he was one of the first three top winners. Finally, on the big day, at a special ceremony on the Sub-Treasury steps, former Vice President Alben Barkley announced the grand prize. Knees shaking, Herbert Idle stumbled up to the Veep, accepted a check for $307,500—the largest cash prize ever given in a contest. Would he now throw away his dictionaries and go off on a big, glorious toot with the estimated $72,245 he would have after taxes? No such thing, said Herbert Idle, father of four, grandfather of six. "That wouldn't be intelligent. I showed a certain amount of common sense in this contest, and that would be out of character."