
"The problem is still puzzling the force in the comptroller's office and anyone who can bring around a solution will be greeted with great gobs of joy by the perplexed clerks."
As it happens William Henry Fouts was a well known Whatcom County pioneer and teacher. He arrived in Olympia from Iowa in 1871 and two years later relocated to the Bellingham area. His name surfaces frequently in our digital collection of historic newspapers.
He also shows up in a number of printed histories such as The Fourth Corner by Lelah Jackson Edson (a book selected as one of historian George Tweney's list of 89 important titles covering Washington State, click this link to see WSL's holdings for the Tweney 89)
Another, and more revealing title, with information on Mr. Fouts is entitled History of Whatcom County, edited by Lottie Roeder Roth (1926). A nice little biographical profile on our subject states he was born in Zanesville, Ohio in 1843, making him 70 years old at the time of the mathematical puzzle. So with that in mind, can anyone out there provide a solution of where to place the punctuation marks on Mr. Fouts' math problem?