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Home » Segments » The Puzzle That Stumped a Nation: “How Old Is Anne?”

The Puzzle That Stumped a Nation: “How Old Is Anne?”

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Long before Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the Little House on the Prairie (Bookshop|Amazon), she worked as a , chronicling life in the Ozarks. In one of her early writings, Wilder refers to what she calls “the famous question”: How old is Anne? A footnote in the text indicates that the question, How old is Anne? simply means “Who knows?” It turns out there’s a behind that rhetorical question. It referred to a math published in a 1903 , which caused no end of consternation and controversy all over . This is part of a complete episode.

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