Almon Brown STROWGER was an undertaker who lived in Kansas City, Missouri and the inventor of the automated step-by-step telephone exchange.

Before his invention, local telephone calls were made by lifting the ‘phone and talking to the local MANUAL OPERATOR, who then connected you through to your requested destination.  This was done via a manual switchboard.  Here patchcords (wires) were stretched across the board, put in place by the MANUAL OPERATOR.  With several calls typically in progress at the same time, the nature of these cords meant that they appeared somewhat higgledy-piggledy as they stretched across the board!  The puzzle initially attempts to recreate an image of such a switchboard.

Here was an early grid when brainstorming this concept of how the switchboard could look like and some rotating dials, but in the end we felt one such rotation was going to be enough.

So the story goes, STROWGER noticed that his undertaking business was getting far less business from AGED CUSTOMERS than his RIVAL.  It turned out that the wife of his rival was working as a MANUAL OPERATOR in the local telephone company and was connecting potential CUSTOMERS through to his RIVAL instead of to STROWGER!  Hence, in our puzzle, the unclued ‘Stepped Entry’ of MANUAL OPERATOR initially connects between CUSTOMERS on the left hand side of the switchboard to RIVAL on the right.  STROWGER thought that, if there were no telephone operators involved, he could avoid this abuse from recurring.

Necessity being the mother of invention, this drove STROWGER to invent in 1889 (and then patent, in 1891) AUTOMATED SWITCHING, using the step-by-step automated telephone exchange.

STROWGER wanted to disrupt the control that the MANUAL OPERATOR had. In our puzzle we first show this happening with Step 1, where the phrase MANUAL OPERATOR (representing a patchcord) stretched across the board is disrupted by resolving the clash – the MANUAL OPERATOR no longer connects potential CUSTOMERS to STROWGER’s RIVAL.

The key to his invention was the step-by-step switch … anyone that has worked for BT or its predecessor will have attended the infamous ’Networks and Systems Appreciation’ week-long course and learnt the story of Strowger and his invention of automated step-by-step switching. In a full-sized exchange a call would pass through several of these; in our puzzle we have simplified the design and show one such step-by-step switch in operation.

A step-by-step switch operates as follows: the caller dials the first digit of the number they wish to reach and the central rod within the switch moves vertically upwards that same number of ‘clicks’.  The second digit is dialled: the central rod then rotates a connector around by this number of ‘clicks’. The call is thus automatically routed, with the ‘call path’ travelling up the central rod and then out of the appropriate connector and on to the dialled party*.  

In our case we have outlined that the caller is to DIAL 44.  Thus the rod moves up four spaces (in response to the first dialled ‘4’) and then rotates by four ‘clicks’ (in response to the second ‘4’,) resulting in CUSTOMERS now being connected to ‘our hero’, STROWGER.  In the hidden instructions we state that the overall endgame is outlined as ENACT GRID’S LAST FOUR CELLS. The solver finds DIAL 44 in these – and only then finds out why there appears to be an extraneous clue number in the bottom right-hand corner. of the grid. [Aside: it took us a while to get the number of clues right so that the ’next’ was 44, and we also wanted to get as many fours into the puzzle as a hint e.g. fourth character from each end, four steps in the pre-amble, four parts of the slogan].  More on the dialling process later.

Early advertising called the new invention the “girl-less, cuss-less, out-of-order-less, wait-less telephone“.

Initially three of these are implemented in the grid: CLARETED at 5d is entered as TED (i.e. with CLARE missing, it is girl-less), 33d’s PERCUSSES is entered as PERES (i.e. is CUSS-less) and 20a’s THWAITE is entered as THE (i.e. WAIT-less). The fourth part of the slogan (“out-of-order-less”) is only achieved after the number has been successfully dialled and the grid movements implemented. At this stage 8d’s entry BROKEN has been removed from the grid, hence rendering the puzzle “out-of-order-less”.  The four statements are now represented in the puzzle.

Further hidden instructions explain the detail of how to DIAL 44, step-by-step.  The next says “RAISE TONE / FOUR CELLS BLANK”.  This enacts (in Column 12) the vertical movement of the central rod of the switch up four ‘clicks’. The next, ROTATE 3×3, imitates the rotating motion of the switch (shown ‘vertically’ in the grid for clarity). It states that CENTRE is O, clarifying that it is the 3×3 block on the right-hand side of the grid, centred on the O (of the now-raised TONE) that needs to rotate. As the second digit is also a ‘4’, this needs to rotate four ‘clicks’. 

The final grid is complete. STROWGER appears down from the top-right of the grid. And AUTOMATED SWITCHING now provides a connection path across the grid from AGED CUSTOMERS down the left-hand side to STROWGER on the right (with his RIVAL no longer receiving these calls!)

Finally, solvers will note that STROWGER’s middle name is BROWN, hence the required highlighting of his name ‘in a nominal colour’.

Despite being an E grade, which we had no intention of making it that difficult (indeed our test solver seemed to have got through it unscathed), we hope you all had as much fun as we had setting it.

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*Fifty seconds of this video show a step-by-step switch in operation, starting midway through it, here:

Alternatively here’s a photo of a Strowger step-by-step switch from the ‘Secret Nuclear Bunker’ museum, Kelvedon Hatch, Essex, that was taken by Encota in Oct 2023.  The central vertical rod can be clearly seen (with the connections for the rotating part less visible behind).

By Encota and Shark (aka Shakenactor)

Posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2025 at 4:44 pm under Setting the scene.
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