Efficiency

Just a bit of trivia: In the New South Wales railway system, the telegraph code RYZY meant:

Vehicle No ….. may be worked forward to ….. behind the brakevan of a suitable goods train during daylight provided locomotive branch certifies fit to travel. If the damaged vehicle is fitted with automatic coupling it must only be worked forward behind a brakevan also fitted with automatic coupling by connecting the automatic couplers on each vehicle but, if fitted with ordinary drawgear, it must be screw coupled. Westinghouse brake to be in use throughout train and on damaged vehicle. Guard to be given written instructions to carefully watch vehicle en route.

This reduced a 90-word message to four letters.

January 27, 2026January 26, 2026 | Language · Technology

Conjunction

We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because ‘two’ is ‘one and one’. We forget that we have still to make a study of ‘and’.

— Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, 1928

January 26, 2026January 25, 2026 | Quotations

First Steps

Tennessee Williams wrote for Weird Tales! The 16-year-old author, writing under his given name, Thomas Lanier Williams, published “The Vengeance of Nitocris” in the magazine’s August 1928 issue. An Egyptian queen invites her enemies to a banquet, where she opens sluice gates to drown them in the waters of the Nile:

[T]he black water plunged in. Furiously it surged over the floor of the run, sweeping tables before it and sending its victims, now face to face with their harrowing doom, into a hysteria of terror. In a moment that icy, black water had risen to their knees, although the room was vast. Some fell instantly dead from the shock, or were trampled upon by the desperate rushing of the mob. Tables ware clambered upon. Lamps and candles were extinguished. Brilliant light rapidly faded to twilight, and a ghastly dimness fell over the room as only the suspended lanterns remained lit. And what a scene of chaotic and hideous horror might a spectator have beheld!

He received $35 for the story, his first published work. “[I]f you’re well acquainted with my writings since then,” he wrote later, “I don’t have to tell you that it set the keynote for most of the work that has followed.”

The full text is here.

January 26, 2026January 25, 2026 | Literature

Company

In 1907, historian Reginald Hine, photographer Thomas Latchmore, and artist F.L. Griggs took a camera to Hertfordshire’s Minsden Chapel hoping to photograph the ghost of a murdered monk whose spirit was said to haunt the place. Hine published this photo in his 1929 History of Hitchin, pointing out “the cowled apparition whose form can faintly be discerned” in the image:

In 1930 Latchmore admitted that the image had been a hoax, created with a double exposure; the ghostly figure may be Hine himself.

While we’re at it: In 1963 by the Rev. Kenneth Lord took this photo in the Church of Christ the Consoler on the grounds of Newby Hall in North Yorkshire:

Ostensibly the figure is another ghostly monk, this one wearing a shroud over its face. If it’s not a double exposure then the figure stands as much as 9 feet tall; make your own judgment.

And a reader sent this image in to the Strand in July 1897:

Taken at Scale Force, the Lake District’s highest waterfall, “It is a perfect representation of a stately, long-bearded old man, clothed in a flowing robe, with a crown and sceptre. … The form is perfect natural. I did not notice it until after the photo was developed.”

Interestingly, as recently as 2006 the old man was still there:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scale_Force_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1557757.jpg — Image: Wikimedia Commons

Whatever he’s looking for, he hasn’t found it yet.

January 25, 2026January 24, 2026 | Hoaxes · Oddities

A Dudeney Square

From Lee Sallows:

“In his book Amusements in Mathematics, H.E. Dudeney presents a method of classifying 4×4 magic squares based on the distribution of their 8 complementary pairs 1 & 16, 2 & 15, .., 8 & 9. There are just 12 distinct such distributions or ‘graphic types’, which he labelled I to XII. The square above is an example of a type X square.”

(Thanks, Lee.)

January 24, 2026 | Science & Math

Dead Center

In a shooting match, Andryusha, Volodya, and Borya each fired 6 shots, and each totaled 71 points.

Andryusha’s first 2 shots earned him 22 points, and Volodya’s first shot earned 3 points.

Who hit the bullseye?

	Select Click for Answer
The only way to partition the 18 shots into 3 equal sets of 6 is: 25, 20, 20, 3, 2, 1 25, 20, 10, 10, 5, 1 50, 10, 5, 3, 2, 1 The first row must be Andryusha’s, since it’s the only one that contains two numbers totaling 22. The score 3 appears only in the first and third rows, so the third must be Volodya’s. Thus he hit the bullseye. From Boris Kordemsky’s The Moscow Puzzles, 1956.

January 23, 2026January 23, 2026 | Puzzles

Vivid

The manuscript for Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4 in E-Flat Major, K. 495, is written in inks of four colors, red, green, blue, and black.

It’s not clear why. Possibly the composer was teasing his friend Joseph Leutgeb, the intended performer. But possibly it’s a code meant to inform the performance.

January 23, 2026 | Art

Sum of Squares

The sum of the first n square numbers is n(n+1)(2n+1)/6.

These sums comprise the square pyramidal numbers — each corresponds to the number of oranges that can be stacked in a square pyramid whose base has side n.

This visual proof, for n=3, shows that six square pyramids with n steps fit in a cuboid of size n(n + 1)(2n + 1).

(By CMG Lee.)

January 22, 2026January 22, 2026 | Science & Math

Credential Envy

In June 1936, when the University of Wisconsin bestowed an honorary doctorate of letters on actress Katharine Cornell, she received a telegram from Noël Coward:

DARLING DARLING DOCTOR KITTY,
THOUGH QUITE REASONABLY PRETTY
THOUGH UNDOUBTEDLY A STAR, DEAR
PLEASE REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE, DEAR.
WHY, IN LIEU OF ALL YOUR BETTERS,
SHOULD YOU HAVE DISTINGUISHED LETTERS?
THIS COMES FROM THE JEALOUS SOEL
OF YOUR SOMEDAY DOCTOR NOËL.

January 22, 2026 | Entertainment

Uh-Oh

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Circle_staircase_paradox.svg — Image: Wikimedia Commons

January 21, 2026 | Science & Math