Christine Chmay, age 10, of St. Catharine's, Ontario, Canada, for her question:

What is the meaning of "according to Hoyle?"

You would think this Hoyle character spoke the last word on just about everything. People say "according to Hoyle" when they state the rules for this and that. Actually there was a person named Edmond Hoyle, an Englishman who lived from 1672 to 1769. He lived a long time and he set down some rules. But he didn't live long enough to set the rules for everything.

Edmond Hoyle loved card games, especially an old game called whist. In his day, almost everybody played whist but some of them had different rules for the game. So, Hoyle decided to~write down the most sensible set of rules for everyone to go by. That was that. Later he wrote down rules for the game of chess, also for backgammon and other card games. People accepted his rule books and quoted them to each other. When they argued about how to play these games, they settled their disputes according to Hoyle. We no longer refer to his rules, but we still say that this or that should be done "according to Hoyle."