Bookmarks (189)

It is true we do not often see the stars in broad daylight, but they are there nevertheless. The blaze of sunlight makes them invisible. A good telescope will always show the stars, and even without a telescope they can sometimes be seen in daylight in rather an odd way. If you can obtain a glimpse of the blue sky on a fine day...

At age 18, James Joyce wrote a play, A Brilliant Career. He began it with an inscription: To My own Soul I dedicate the first true work of my life. It’s the only one of his writings that bears a dedication.

In “Short Notes of My Life,” Horace Walpole records an alarming experience: One night in the beginning of November, 1749, as I was returning from Holland House by moonlight, about ten at night, I was attacked by two highwaymen in Hyde Park, and the pistol of one of them going off accidentally, razed the skin under my eye, left some marks of shot on...

Index entries in John Carey’s The Violent Effigy: A Study of Dickens’ Imagination, 1973: babies, bottled, 82 begging-letters, 67 beheading, 21 caged birds, 44, 46, 116-19 cannibalism, 22-4, 175 cleanliness, excessive, 36-7 climbing boys, 72 coffins, walking, 80-1 combustible persons, 14, 165 dolls’ houses, 34 dust heaps, 109-11 fire, seeing pictures in, 16 furniture, live, 102-3 grindstones, 129 home-smashing, 17 junk, enchantment of, 49-50...

Marksman A hits a certain small target 75 percent of the time. Marksman B hits it 25 percent of the time. The two of them aim at that target and fire simultaneously. One bullet hits it. What’s the probability that it came from A?

I heard the story — but I cannot verify it — that Marshall Lyautey (1854-1934) owned a parrot which incorporated these words in its vocabulary: What a beautiful evening! What a beautiful evening! and often repeated them in earnest. Now one day the renowned soldier, on returning home, was greeted by the same interjection which seemed so in keeping with the fine evening. But...

In a 1958 essay, economist Leonard Read argued that no one knows how to make a pencil. In a complex economy, the components of this simple implement — cedar, lacquer, graphite, ferrule, factice, pumice, wax, and glue — are contributed by a network of specialists who never meet. “There isn’t a single person … including the president of the pencil company, who contributes more...

A story told by the Viscount De L’Isle, V.C., K.G., quoted by J. Bryan in Hodgepodge, 1986: “Old Lord Leicester, watching a cricket match at Lord’s, dropped his umbrella. The Duke of Portland, sitting near him, picked it up and handed it back, saying, ‘I’m Portland.’ There was no response, so he repeated, ‘I’m Portland.’ Lord Leicester grunted, ‘I never said you weren’t,’ and...

In 1952 Nancy Mitford asked Evelyn Waugh, “What do you do with all the people who want interviews, with fan letters & with fans in the flesh? Just a barrage of nos?” He responded with his own rules: (a) Humble expressions of admiration. To these a post-card saying ‘I am delighted to learn that you enjoyed my book. E. W.’ (b) Impudent criticism. No...

After watching Inuit drag a heavy boat out of the water on “rollers” of inflated seal hides, California inventor William Albee devised a baglike tire 5 to 9 feet long and 2.5 feet in diameter. Tires that size can gain traction on almost any terrain, and when inflated to a low pressure they’ll envelop large obstacles without suffering damage. Strikingly, Life noted, “They will...

Jane Austen is to me the greatest wonder amongst novel writers. I do not mean that she is the greatest novel writer, but she seems to me the greatest wonder. Imagine, if you were to instruct an author or an authoress to write a novel under the limitations within which Jane Austen writes! Supposing you were to say, ‘Now, you must write a novel,...

Is it possible to fold a square napkin so that its perimeter increases? This beautifully simple question has attracted sustained attention since Soviet mathematician Vladimir Arnold first posed it in 1956. If each fold must include all layers, then the answer is no: The perimeter of a folded unit square will never exceed 4. In 1997 American physicist Robert J. Lang showed that the...

[Samuel] Rogers met Lord Dudley at one of the foreign watering-places, and began in his vain way, ‘What a terrible thing it is how one’s fame pursues one, and that one can never get away from one’s own identity! Now I sat by a lady the other night, and she began, ‘I feel sure you must be Mr. Rogers.’ — ‘And were you?’ said...

Notable expressions of dismay made by Panurge during a tempest at sea in Gargantua and Pantagruel: Ughughbubbubughsh! Augkukshw! Bgshwogrbuh! Abubububugh! Bububbububbubu! boo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Ubbubbughschwug! Ubbubbugshwuplk! ubbubbubbughshw bubbubughshwtzrkagh! Alas, alas! ubbubbubbugh! bobobobobo! bubububuss! Ubbubbughsh! Grrrshwappughbrdub! Bubububbugh! boo-hoo-hoo! Ubbubbubbugh! Grrwh! Upchksvomitchbg! Ububbubgrshlouwhftrz! Ubbubbububugh! ugg! ugg! Ubbubbubbugh! Boo-hoo-hoo! “My personal favorite, however, is the incredible-sounding ‘Wagh, a-grups-grrshwahw!’,” writes wordplay enthusiast Trip Payne. “Aside from its logological interest (eight...

A puzzle from The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night: “Solve the following problem if you can: a flock of pigeons alighted upon a tree, some perching upon the upper branches and some upon the lower; those upon the upper branches said to those upon the lower: ‘If one of you flies up to us our number will be double yours; if...

In 1999, archaeologists made a stunning find near the summit of a stratovolcano on the Argentina–Chile border. Three Inca children, sacrificed in a religious ritual 500 years earlier, had been preserved immaculately in the small chamber in which they had been left to die. Due to the dryness and low temperature of the mountainside, the bodies had frozen before they could dehydrate, making them...

In 1957, a runaway cow in Guildford knocked down a man on a pedestrian crossing. At trial, the defendant’s counsel argued that the owner of a tame animal was not liable for damage it did that was “foreign to its species.” Since a cow was undoubtedly tame, he would seek to prove that “the cow attacked the plaintiff; if that were so, there was...

In 2007, during a construction project at 39 Avenue George V in Paris, artist Pierre Delavie draped the site in a scaffolding tarpaulin of 2,500 square meters printed with a distorted image of the site’s former structure. Crows and cornices of polystyrene were even added to complete the effect. When the work was finished, pieces of the trompe-l’œil drapery were sold at auction. More...

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes — our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.” — G.K. Chesterton

After a rain, the Bolivian salt flat Salar de Uyuni becomes the world’s largest mirror. The letter J appears nowhere in the periodic table of the elements. 9(9 – 6) yields same result upside down: (9 – 6)6 = 729. (Erich Friedman) Rearrange the letters in SUPRARATIONAL and you get PRO-AUSTRALIAN. “A good book praises itself.” — German proverb

Cruising off Rhode Island in 1717, pirate Samuel Bellamy plundered a Boston sloop and granted his crew’s wish to sink her. Before putting the captain ashore, Bellamy told him: I am sorry they won’t let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do any one a mischief, when it is not to my advantage; damn the sloop, we must sink her, and...

John Alexander Smith, Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, opened a course of lectures in 1914 with these words: “Gentlemen — you are now about to embark upon a course of studies which will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Some of you, when you...

David Morice posed this puzzle in the February 1989 issue of Word Ways. The following sentence is such a thicket of interrupting clauses that it’s difficult to divine its meaning. Who is accused, what’s the verdict, what are the crimes, and what’s the real name of the real criminal? “Let’s see you unChandler this one!” Big Mike, when Susan, without whom he, whose rugged...

With Love and with Lust, I often have reckoned, Whichever comes first soon turns into the second. (By Oxford English professor Nevill Coghill, 1899-1980.)

An industrious ant sets out to travel the length of a rubber rope 1 kilometer long. Just as it begins, the rope starts to stretch uniformly at a constant rate of 1 kilometer per second, so that after 1 second the rope is 2 kilometers long, after 2 seconds it’s 3 kilometers long, and so on. The ant advances heroically at 1 centimeter per...

Corresponding with the Daily Mail in 1933, Compton Mackenzie presented two lists of the 10 most beautiful words in English. The first was phrased in blank verse: Carnation, azure, peril, moon, forlorn, Heart, silence, shadow, April, apricot. The second was an Alexandrine couplet: Damask and damson, doom and harlequin and fire, Autumnal, vanity, flame, nectarine, desire. In his 1963 autobiography he said that these...

By Vincent Pantaloni, a wordless proof that the sum of the first n odd integers is n2.

The 1937 phrasebook Collins’ Pocket Interpreters: France paints an alarming picture of a typical visit to France: I cannot open my case. I have lost my keys. I did not know that I had to pay. I cannot find my porter. Excuse me, sir, that seat is mine. I cannot find my ticket! I have left my gloves (my purse) in the dining car....

This is believed to be the oldest puzzle of its type, offered by Angelo Lewis in 1893. “Of these six segments the experimenter is required to form a cube.”

crastin n. the day after, the morrow festinate adj. hurried hammajang adj. in a disorderly or chaotic state disceptation n. disputation, debate, discussion What time did various incidents happen? Everyone agrees that the Titanic hit the iceberg at 11:40 p.m. and sank at 2:20 a.m. — but there’s disagreement on nearly everything that happened in between. … There was simply too much pressure. Mrs....

“A planet doesn’t explode of itself,” said drily The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air — “That they were able to do it is proof that highly Intelligent beings must have been living there.” — John Hall Wheelock

Sydney Smith suggested this inscription for William Pitt’s statue in Hanover Square: To the Right Honourable William Pitt Whose errors in foreign policy And lavish expenditure of our Resources at home Have laid the foundation of National Bankruptcy And scattered the seeds of Revolution, This Monument was erected By many weak men, who mistook his eloquence for wisdom And his insolence for magnanimity, By...

When Japanese authorities sought to honor Tokyo’s oldest man in 2010, they were rebuffed repeatedly by his family. When police finally broke into the house, they found Sogen Kato’s mummified corpse in a first-floor bedroom (1), together with a newspaper from 1978 (2) and a rotary telephone (3). An official said, “His family must have known he has been dead all these years and...

In 1620, the Grand Duke of Tuscany wrote to Galileo with a puzzling problem. In rolling three fair six-sided dice, it would seem that the sums 9 and 10 should appear with equal frequency, as there are six ways to produce each result: 10 = 6 + 3 + 1 = 6 + 2 + 2 = 5 + 4 + 1 = 5...

A striking passage from Avrahm Yarmolinsky’s 1959 biography of Ivan Turgenev: By the end of May [1840] the traveler was back in Berlin. Before he reached the capital he touched at Leghorn, Pisa, Genoa, sailed on Lago Maggiore, traveled to St. Gotthard in a sleigh, visited Lucerne, Basel, Mannheim, Mainz, Frankfort and Leipzig, all within thirteen days. In the same period he managed to...

Next year’s date, 2025, is remarkable: It’s a square (452). It’s a product of squares (92 × 52). It’s the sum of three squares (402 + 202 + 52). It’s the sum of the cubes of the first nine positive integers (13 + 23 + 33 + 43 + 53 + 63 + 73 + 83 + 93). Equivalently, it’s the square of the...

“Lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking — had he the gold? or had the gold him?” — John Ruskin, Unto This Last, 1860

Art dealer Ambroise Vollard was acquainted with many of the foremost artists of the early 20th century, and as a result he appears often in their work. Above are portraits by Cézanne, Renoir, and Bonnard, and he sat also for Rouault, Forain, Vallotton, Bernard, and Picasso. Picasso wrote, “The most beautiful woman who ever lived never had her portrait painted, drawn, or engraved any...

In checkless chess it’s illegal to give check without giving checkmate. This changes the whole complexion of the game. T.R. Dawson published this example in Die Welt in 1951. White is to mate in two moves. The answer, 1. f6, threatens 2. Qf5, which strangely is mate because the black king can’t move off the long light diagonal, since that would discover check by...

A sentence must contain forty letters to be true. This sentence does have a total of forty letters. Therefore the second sentence is a true sentence. This logic seems to hold up. Unfortunately, sentences 1 and 2 have 40 letters each — and sentence 3 has 41. (David Morice, “Kickshaws,” Word Ways 22:1 [February 1989], 44-52.)

THOUGH I can never pay enough to your Grandfather’s Memory, for his tender care of my Education, yet I must observe in it this Mistake; That by keeping me at home, where I was one of my young Masters, I lost the advantage of my most docile time. For not undergoing the same Discipline, I must needs come short of their experience, that are...

A creature living in the plane can’t see through a unit square — the square’s four line segments block its line of sight from any angle. Is there a way to achieve the same result using fewer building materials? Removing one of the square’s sides does the job — this requires only 3 units of line segment and still prevents anyone from seeing across...

NBC’s Today Show had a surprising guest in 1959: G. Clifford Prout Jr., president of the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, an activist group that hoped to clothe “any dog, cat, horse or cow that stands higher than 4 inches or longer than 6 inches.” Prout’s bizarre cause earned him regular media attention, and the society’s newsletter published this anthem: High on the...

The Royal Statistical Society’s 2024 Christmas Quiz consists of two parts, a warmup section and the quiz itself, each consisting of 12 questions. Solvers (and teams) have until January 5 to submit their solutions, and the top three entrants will win a donation of £150, £120, or £90 to the charity or good cause of their choice. Updates and corrections will be posted on...

Samuel Johnson said that sending a timid boy to a public school is “forcing an owl upon day.” Inscribed over the door of the library at Murcia, Spain: “Here the dead open the eyes of the living.” TRICE in Pig Latin is ICE TRAY. 35 × 1482 × 9760 = 3514829760 (Jean-Marc Falcoz) “Mauve is pink trying to be purple.” — Whistler Pekwachnamaykoskwaskwaypinwanik Lake...

During the Black Death, Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani wrote, “The priest who confessed the sick and those who nursed them so generally caught the infection that the victims were abandoned and deprived confession, sacrament, medicine, and nursing … And many lands and cities were made desolate. And this plague lasted till ________.” He left the blank so that he could record the date of...

Another and still more amusing instance of self-revelation may be found in a manuscript familiar to many who have visited the Bodleian Library at Oxford. There, among other precious treasures, is a collection of notes scribbled by Charles II. to Clarendon, and by Clarendon to Charles II., to beguile the tedium of Council. They look, for all the world, like the notes which school-girls...

“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before and wiser than the one that comes after it.” — George Orwell

Henry James told Austin Dobson he’d been lost in the maze at Hampton Court. “I am surprised at that,” Dobson answered. “I should have thought you would have felt that you were in the middle of one of your sentences.” (From a letter of Harold J. Laski to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Dec. 1, 1925. See Homage, A Prose Maze, Stops and Starts, and...