Puzzle Once Owned by Olive C. Hazlett, The Famous and Baffling Checker Board

Description:

This paper puzzle has fourteen cardboard pieces that can be arranged in different ways to form an 8 x 8 checkerboard. The pieces fit in a cardboard box. Pencil marks on the pieces number them from 1 to 14.

The lid of the box indicates that there were over seventy-eight different solutions. A sticker on the inside of the lid indicates that 85 solutions were known and that Vasen Industries of Davenport, Iowa would pay $5.00 for any new solution. A mark on the lid of the box reads: THE FAMOUS and BAFFLING (/) CHECKER BOARD (/) PUZZLE (/) 15c. A mark inside the lid reads: THE VASEN MFG. COMPANY (/) Davenport, Iowa

According to Slocum and Botermans, "The first checkerboard puzzle seems to have originated in 1880, when a certain Henry Luers obtained a U.S. patent for a 'Sectional Checkerboard', consisting of fifteen differently shaped pieces of complete squares of a checkerboard."

According to newspaper records, the Vasen Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1927. It apparently was still in business in 1964.

Associated with the mathematician Olive C. Hazlett. For related objects, see acquisitions 1998.0314 and 2015.3004.

References:

Jerry Slocum and Jack Botermans, Puzzles Old and New How to Make and Solve Them, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986, p. 14.

The Davenport Democrat and Leader, Davenport, Iowa, May 22, 1927, p. 15.