But young Nicholas Johnson, a conundrum-solving kid who has tinkered with puzzles since he was a toddler, says he has the answer.

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Nicholas was a wealthy young bishop who started giving away all his gold after his parents died.

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Unfortunately for Witte and Russia, Alexander died early and was succeeded by his utterly ill-prepared, indecisive and weak-willed young son, Nicholas II.

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To take only the two most obvious examples, Sir Nicholas Serota, a former young Turk, presides at the new Tate, Britain's most popular gallery, and Charles Saatchi's once shocking collection of Brit art is on display in museum-space that he colonised in London's staid old County Hall upriver.

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At 42, Nicholas Gerber is a little too young to retire, but he is already thinking about how to sell the business he started nine years ago.

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By a twist of fate, he stays frozen for over fifty years, emerging with enough of his Dudley Do-Right manliness intact to impress single mom Jamie Lee Curtis, her young son Elijah Wood, and even her dull suitor Nicholas Surovy.

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From then on he endured internal exile in three different locations, followed by a lowly position at court which enabled Nicholas I, the new tsar, to function as Pushkin's personal censor while flirting with his new young wife.

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