The Press: Puzzle Trust

Puzzling servant girls; patient schoolboys, chinless sodawater clerks; burly salespersons all want that $1,000. Dirt cheap publications which they read offer them riches. Scarlet billboards proffer fortunes. Solve a puzzle. Win a trip to Europe, or an automobile, or a set of dishes or that $1,000.

Throughout the land the ignorant are toiling over puzzles, prize contests, “cinema titles,” “Presidents’ faces.” Lamps burn in many garrets long after the day’s work is finished while slaves to the dream of puzzle riches ponder and strive. Seduced by the promises of advertisement and feature contests, (arranged by canny publishers to force-feed circulation), the slaves work endlessly. Earnest, stupid, they know not that they have scarcely one chance in one thousand to win the prize.

The New York Evening Graphic, juicy gum-chewers’ sheetlet, recently offered $50,000 in a cinema title contest. Certain aspects of the replies prompted them to demand an inquiry. Chief Assistant U. S District Attorney G. J. Mintzer inquired; unearthed a “puzzle trust.”

Approximately $25,000 is constantly before the public as various prize and puzzle baits. To collect this wealth, the “puzzle trust” operates an information system, publishes a paper (for professionals) filled with inside facts, percentages, tips, systems, devices. To win the Graphic contest, they narrowed 6,000 possible titles down to four score. From these 80, their clients could make their various combinatioons; could submit them through the 50-odd names of “friends” which form a part of their professional equipment.

What chance have schoolboys, sodawater clerks, salespersons?