This is an historical puzzle dating from 1882 when it was made from paper. The inventor, WH Rieff, called it a Spelling Toy and Puzzle and it was meant to be both educational and entertaining. It has not been made in any format for generations to our knowledge.

You can use any word which can be found in a standard English language dictionary or Scrabble dictionary. Like Scrabble, types of words which cannot be used are abbreviations, prefixes and suffixes or words that require a hyphen or an apostrophe. Proper names and words that are spelled with a capital letter also cannot be used

Note: This is also an item that may have appeal to educators in developing word, spelling, and language skills.

Made in USA. Thanks to Rob Stegmann from Rob's Puzzle Pages and the Jerry Slocum Museum at Indiana University for the idea for this very interesting puzzle.

UPDATE! Jeff Scott Brown wrote a program for us which identifies all possible answers based on the scrabble dictionary.