Martian Chamber of Commerce Bulletin.

According to the description, an honest Chamber of Commerce bulletin from Mars would have to read:

“Settle on Mars, one of the first heavenly bodies to cool off after creation. We have practically no water, practically no oxygen in our atmosphere. The oxygen has gone to the rocks, and much of our country is covered with fine red dust, caused by the oxidation of our iron deposits.

“The dust doesn’t stay put, however, because we have winds of gale force almost all of the time, cause by the rapid changes in our temperature – up to 80 degrees at noontime and down to 100 degrees below zero at night.

“We have no twilight, and no dawn. Our daytime sky is no brighter than twilight on Earth, but there’s every chance of romance here. We have two nice moons, one which remains 132 hours above the horizon. Our nearer moon, Phobos, is as close to us as New York to Los Angeles on Earth. And, if you like eclipses, they are a dime a dozen up here. We have as many as 1,000 of them each year.

“Come, spend a year with us, You’ll have plenty of time to look around, because our year is 687 days. And girls – if you happen to weigh around 200 pounds, you’ll find life can be beautiful on Mars, because here, you’ll weight less than eighty.”

(excerpt from the The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky • Sun, Jul 23, 1939)

The Canals on Mars by Sam Loyd

Here is a map of the newly discovered cities and waterways on our nearest neighbor planet, Mars. Start at the city marked T, at the south pole, and see if you can spell a complete English sentence by making a tour of all the cities, visiting each city only once, and returning to the starting point.

When this puzzle originally appeared in a magazine, more than fifty thousand readers reported, “There is no possible way.” Yet it is a very simple puzzle.