Invention of the Devil?

"Five lords always dined at a small round table. Lord Ha sat next to Lord Hi and Lord Ho. Lord Haw sat next to Lord Hwlk (pronounced How) and Lord Hi. Which two sat next to Lord Hwlk?"

"Tom is twice as old as his brother Sam, who is half as old as his sister Anne, who is five years older than her brotherJim. Who are the twins?"

To turn to one's neighbor in a crowded pub and suddenly pop such questions as these might seem eccentric behavior, but in Britain these days it is not only acceptable but fashionable. The neighbor will probably try for the answers, and he may also in turn demand that his inquisitor "complete the following by filling in

the blank spaces: OTTFFSS _ _ _. " It

is all a part of Britain's latest fad, the successor to Gamesmanship and the U and non-U cult. Its name: Eleven-plussery.

The fad began after this year's crop of ten-and eleven-year-olds took the controversial "eleven-plus examination" (TIME, Feb. 4, 1952) that will determine whether they will be allowed to prepare for a university at a grammar school or have to be satisfied with a commercial, technical or trade school. As the youngsters recited the questions they remembered, their parents began testing each other and their friends. Then the London Daily Mail published some of the questions as a challenge to their readers. How many adults, the paper wanted to know, could get through the ordeal their children were meeting?

The article brought a deluge of letters. Employers demanded that the Daily Mail stop publishing such questions because their employees were spending all their office time playing Eleven-plussery. An Oxford don was approached by a reporter who demanded that he answer: "A clock is twelve minutes slow but is gaining five seconds per hour. A watch is 20 minutes fast, but is losing 7 1/2 seconds per hour. How many minutes fast will the watch be when the clock shows the right time?" A few days later, a primary schoolmaster wrote a whole article defending his incorrect answer to the question: "Here are the first six letters of the alphabet, written above and below the line. Continue the alphabet in a similar fashion:

A EF,, ________________

BCD

As the fad spread, some Britons devised their own ways for dealing with questions ("Oh, they can be solved," said

Actress Yolande Donlan. "Probably by algebra, but not by me"). But to others, the fad merely strengthened their conviction that there was something basically wrong with making children determine their whole future by the eleven-plus ordeal. "The invention of the devil!" cried the Rev. Arthur Morton, Director of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. "I say that future historians will condemn us as much for this as we rightly condemn the people who made young children work in mines."

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