Futility Closet

Three beautiful women and their jealous husbands want to cross a river, but the boat will hold only two people at a time. How can they arrange the crossing if no woman is to remain with a man unless her husband is present? I'll give the answer tomorrow.

Species designations for Wile E. Coyote:

• Famishus vulgarus
• Eatius slobbius
• Hardheadipus oedipus
• Carnivorous slobbius
• Evereadii eatibus
• Apetitius giganticus
• Hungrii flea-bagius
• Overconfidentii vulgaris
• Caninus nervous rex
• Grotesques appetitus
• Nemesis ridiculii

Chuck Jones said, "Wile E. is my reality, Bugs Bunny is my goal."

The 13th day of the month is most likely to fall on a Friday.

Solution to A Literary Knight's Tour, from Tuesday:

The quotation is from King John, Act IV, Scene II, lines 11-16:

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

The puzzle is taken from Miscellaneous Notes and Queries, January 1889.

Ernest Hemingway's shortest story was six words long:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

He's said to have called it his best work.

The knight's tour is a recreation familiar to chessplayers: Move a knight about an empty chessboard so as to visit each square exactly once.

On this board, each square contains a syllable. Collect them in the right order and you'll compose a six-line quotation from Shakespeare. What is it?

I'll give the answer tomorrow. (Hint: Start on e4, "to".)

In July 1891, lightning struck the house of a Mr. Arent S. Vandyck of New Salem, Vt. He submitted this account to a Boston newspaper:

Suddenly the younger Mr. Vandyck [his son] pointed to an old-fashioned sofa. Upon it lay what was apparently the silver image of a cat curled up in an exceedingly comfortable position. Each glittering hair was separate and distinct, and each silvery bristle of the whiskers described a graceful curve as in life. Father and son turned towards the sword which hung upon the wall just above the sofa and there saw that the sword had been stripped of all its silver. The hilt was gone, and the scabbard was but a strip of blackened steel. The family cat had been electroplated by lightning.

Draw your own conclusions.

The hardest English tongue twister, according to author William Poundstone:

"The seething sea ceaseth and thus the seething sea sufficeth us."

An optical illusion. Squares A and B are the same color.

unnun
v. to strip a nun of her position or character