Dudeney began his puzzle career by contributing short problems to news-papers and magazines. His earliest work, published under the pseudonym of "Sphinx," seems to have been in cooperation with the American puzzlist, Sam Loyd. For a year and a half, in the late 1890's, the two men collaborated on a series of articles in Tit-Bits, an English penny weekly. Later, using his own name, Dudeney contributed to a variety of publications including The Week(y Dispatch, The Queen, Blighty, and Cassell's Magazine. For twenty years his puzzle page, "Perplexities," which he illustrated, ran in The Strand Magazine. This was a popular monthly founded and edited by George Newnes, an enthusiastic chess player who had also started and formerly edited Tit-Bits.