In the wintertime, when the days were short, Jefferson would sit with his family before a fire in the late afternoon. This was the hour, a granddaughter said, “when it grew too dark to read,” and so “in the half hour before candles came in, as we all sat round the fire, he taught us several childish games, and would play them with us.”71 There was “Cross Questions and Crooked Answers” and “I Love My Love with A,” a pastime in which successive players had to come up with attributes throughout the alphabet.
