Tea at Trianon: How the 20 Questions Game Came to America

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

How the 20 Questions Game Came to America

From author Shannon Selin:

The idea that the 20 Questions game was invented in the United States can be traced to a book published in New York in 1882. Twenty Questions: A Short Treatise on the Game – essentially a rule book with some examples of the game for beginners – did not base its claim on strong evidence.

The origin of the game of Twenty Questions, like that of many other things, is lost in the mists of antiquity. Like everything else, it probably had a prototype among the upper Himalayas. The internal evidence, however, is strong from its purely intellectual nature, that in its present form it is a game of New England origin, and was probably invented by some intellectual Pequot, near the mouth of the beautiful river where has long been its chief dwelling point. (1)
In fact, the first references to 20 Questions appeared in Great Britain. In 1829, Scottish teacher William Fordyce Mavor recommended the “Game of Twenty” as a means of agreeably passing a long winter evening. (Read more.)