This is a puzzle story arranged by Sam Loyd of a billboard or rather of the evolution of a word thereon from pants to nails. On the surface there seems to be no connection between pants and nails, yet it is as easy as eating pie to make nails out of pants if you know how. The first word advertises the product of a clothing man. But he has made his reckoning without the host, or rather a number of hosts. For a florist, a furrier, a jeweler, a plumber, a dry-goods man, a carpenter, a physician, a lawyer, a mason, a ship's chandler and a hardware man happen along one after the other, and by merely pasting over one letter of the word on the billboard with a different letter, each alters the word into an advertisement of his own product. The film is ingeniously arranged so as to give the onlooker a chance to use his wits in guessing the next word on the billboard. In the end a goat comes along and eats up the poster. This goat is a puzzle in itself. Is it a real goat? Who knows?
—Moving Picture World synopsis