Thursday 22 June 2017

Research in French Newspapers

I have been looking through the issues of Le Siecle in which H. J. R.Murray reported that A Feisthamel published the magic knight tours as they were discovered. However I find that most of the tours published there are of the two or four knight variety that I prefer to call Emperor tours, since they use rook moves to link the ends of the knight sections. The tours appear mostly in the Friday section of Feisthamel's puzzle column. However they are not presented as tour diagrams, instead they are all cryptotours whose solutions, besides delineating the tours, also serve as a word puzzle in themselves such as an anagram, though these puzzles all seem pretty feeble to me. The issues can be accessed via Gallica here:

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb32868136g/date

In the issue for 3 Feb 1883 Feisthamel also lists a number of other French newspapers or magazines in which toors were published. These include the titles National, Globe, Soir, Telegraphe, Gil Blas, Gaulois, Clairon, Etoile francaise, Paris Journal and two others where single examples appeared. So far I have only located one of these online:Le Gaulois, where the puzzles appear on Mondays and are in two separate series (Jeux D'Esprits and Passe-Temps Hebdomadaire) which alternate fortnightly.

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb32779904b/date.langFR

This includes King tours by R. Dubief and by a Monsieur Galtier, the latter being magic tours.
Much scope for further historical research here!