It has been suggested that this puzzle was a great favourite among the young apprentices of the City of London in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Readers will have noticed the curious brass grasshopper on the Royal Exchange. This long-lived creature escaped the fires of 1666 and 1838. The grasshopper, after his kind, was the crest of Sir Thomas Gresham, merchant grocer, who died in 1579, and from this cause it has been used as a sign by grocers in general. Unfortunately for the legend as to its origin, the puzzle was only produced by myself so late as the year 1900. On twelve of the thirteen black discs are placed numbered counters or grasshoppers. The puzzle is to reverse their order, so that they shall read, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., in the opposite direction, with the vacant disc left in the same position as at present. Move one at a time in any order, either to the adjoining vacant disc or by jumping over one grasshopper, like the moves in draughts. The moves or leaps may be made in either direction that is at any time possible. What are the fewest possible moves in which it can be done?
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