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Raymond Queneau’s 1947 book Exercises in Style tells the same story in 99 different ways, from telegram to ode: Narrative: “One day at about midday in the Parc Monceau district, on the back platform of a more or less full S bus (now No. 84), I observed a person with a very long neck who was wearing a felt hat which had a plaited...

From Wikimedia user Cmglee: If the history of the universe were recounted backward in a 138-page book, with 100 lines on each page and 100 letters in each line, written human history would occupy half a letter. Everything involving humans would lie on the first line; the dinosaurs would die out on the first page; and by page 10 the most complex lifeforms would...

Reponse of a 10-year-old child invited to write an essay about a bird and a beast: The bird that I am going to write about is the owl. The owl cannot see at all by day and at night is as blind as a bat. I do not know much about the owl, so I will go on to the beast which I am...

By Wikimedia user Efbrazil. Begin at the star. The number at your current position tells you the number of blocks that your next jump must span. All jumps must be orthogonal. So, for example, your first jump must take you to the 1 in the lower left corner or the 2 in the upper right. What sequence of jumps will return you to the...

In Bologna, the former convent of San Michele in Bosco contains a 162-meter hallway that’s “aimed” at the Asinelli tower 1,407 meters from the window. This produces an odd effect: As you move north along the hallway toward the window, you’re approaching the tower, yet it seems to shrink. This is because the retinal size of the window’s aperture increases enormously as you approach...

“The Great Matrimonial Admonisher and Pacificator,” a reversible lithograph published in Baltimore in 1861. Via the Library of Congress.

Excerpts from the literary notebooks of Thomas Hardy: “Loughborough used to say, ‘Do what you think right, & never think of what you are going to say to excuse it beforehand.’ — a good maxim.” “Bonaparte had not the patience requisite for defensive operations, said Wellington.” “Miracles, scriptural & ecclesiastical — how make a difference?” “Brahms – The individual character of his ideas. …...

Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer make knitted illusions. When it’s viewed from the front, each piece presents only a series of unremarkable stripes, but when it’s viewed obliquely, an image emerges. Here’s an introduction to the technique, and here are some patterns.

Conventional stairs are somewhat extravagant: Because users alternate their steps (1), half of each tread goes unused. In close quarters, floor space can be conserved by omitting these unused portions (3), permitting a slope as high as 65 degrees without sacrificing the depth of the treads (2). Because each tread “overlaps” those that precede and follow it, an alternating staircase might require only half...

If nature be regarded as the teacher and we poor human beings as her pupils, the human race presents a very curious picture. We all sit together at a lecture and possess the necessary principles for understanding it, yet we always pay more attention to the chatter of our fellow students than to the lecturer’s discourse. Or, if our neighbor copies something down, we...

Raymond Smullyan presented this oddity in his Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes in 1980. Suppose we come upon this abandoned chess game. Can White mate in two moves? The answer seems to be yes. If Black can’t castle, then White can play 1. Ke6 and then promote his g-pawn, giving mate. If Black can castle, that means that neither his king nor his rook...

This is beautifully well done — a humiliating list of all the ways your brain can deceive you (click to enlarge). Designed by John Manoogian III.

This is a picture of a cow. If you can’t see it (I couldn’t), there’s an explanatory image on page 66 of John McCrone’s 1991 book The Ape That Spoke. The experience illustrates how the brain is able to construct a picture from limited data by relying on patterns and experience.

Thomas Jefferson to the Rev. Isaac Story, Dec. 5, 1801, on the afterlife: When I was young I was fond of the speculations which seemed to promise some insight into that hidden country, but observing at length that they left me in the same ignorance in which they had found me, I have for very many years ceased to read or to think concerning...

These are the punts of Trinity College, Cambridge, moored on the River Cam. What is the significance of their names?

Steaming from New York to the Azores in 1867, Mark Twain noted a curious companion overhead: We had the phenomenon of a full moon located just in the same spot in the heavens at the same hour every night. The reason of this singular conduct on the part of the moon did not occur to us at first, but it did afterward when we...

Reader J. William Hook submitted this curiosity to the Strand in August 1899. Holding the page level with the eyes foreshortens the characters and reveals a love poem: Art thou not dear unto my heart? Oh, I search that heart and see And from my bosom tear the part That beats not true to thee. But to my bosom thou art dear, More dear...

(Until William Herschel’s advances in telescopes, stars seemed to have “rays” or “tails.”) At a dinner given by Mr Aubert in the year 1786, William Herschel was seated next to Mr Cavendish, who was reputed to be the most taciturn of men. Some time passed without his uttering a word, then he suddenly turned to his neighbour and said: ‘I am told that you...

An art gallery with n walls will always be safe with n/3 guards — the guards will always be able arrange themselves to observe the whole gallery. That’s Chvátal’s art gallery theorem, discovered in 1973 by mathematician Václav Chvátal. Interestingly, it’s true only of two-dimensional floor plans — a three-dimensional gallery may not be safe even if you post a guard at every corner....

For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for...