A wazir is a fanciful chess piece that can move one square horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally. This one finds itself in the upper left corner of the board. Can it make its way to the lower right while visiting each square exactly once?
Okay Then
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From the Strand, April 1903:
This photo is of a cabin on one of the Flushing Line steamers. It has the peculiarity that, while showing a small room (cabin), on looking at it upside down [below] it gives an excellent representation of a very large room, which can be likened to a ball-room, with on right-hand side a doorway, large open fireplace, pictures, windows, etc., on left-hand a series of pictures and windows, with doorway at far end. — George A. Goodwin, 28, Victoria Street, S.W.
Finale
On Jan. 30, 1874, Tamil poet Ramalinga Swamigal entered his one-room home in Chennai and directed his followers to lock the door from the outside. If the door were forced open, he said, nothing would be found inside.
In May the government forced open the door. The room was empty. The disappearance has never been explained.
Observation
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I used to like to hear him admire the beauty of a flower; it was a kind of gratitude to the flower itself, and a personal love for its delicate form and colour. I seem to remember him gently touching a flower he delighted in; it was the same simple admiration that a child might have.
— Francis Darwin, of his father
An Awkward Pause
In 2014, three truck drivers sued Oakhurst Dairy of Portland, Maine, alleging that they’d been unfairly denied four years’ worth of overtime pay. Maine law generally required time-and-a-half pay for each hour worked above 40 hours, but it listed exemptions for:
The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:
(1) Agricultural produce;
(2) Meat and fish products; and
(3) Perishable foods.
That’s not quite clear. Does the law exempt the distribution of the three categories listed, or does it exempt packing for shipment or distribution of them? The confusion shows the value of the so-called Oxford comma, the often-skipped comma that follows the next-to-last item in a series, as in “A, B, and C.” A comma after “shipment” would have eliminated the ambiguity in the language above; the drivers’ lawyer said, “That comma would have sunk our ship.” But without the comma, the court ruled, the meaning is uncertain, and the dairy had to pay the drivers $5 million.
In 2017 the state legislature replaced the troublesome passage with this:
The canning; processing; preserving; freezing; drying; marketing; storing; packing for shipment; or distributing of:
(1) Agricultural produce;
(2) Meat and fish products; and
(3) Perishable foods.
The New York Times wrote, “So now we get to replace Oxford comma pedantry with semicolon pedantry.”
See Details.
(Thanks, Edward.)
Queries
Questions put by Benjamin Franklin to his Junto, a club for mutual improvement that he founded in Philadelphia in 1727:
- How shall we judge of the goodness of a writing? Or what qualities should a writing have to be good and perfect in its kind? (His own answer: “It should be smooth, clear, and short.”)
- Can a man arrive at perfection in this life, as some believe; or is it impossible, as others believe?
- Wherein consists the happiness of a rational creature?
- What is wisdom? (“The knowledge of what will be best for us on all occasions, and the best ways of attaining it.”)
- Is any man wise at all times and in all things? (“No, but some are more frequently wise than others.”)
- Whether those meats and drinks are not the best that contain nothing in their natural taste, nor have anything added by art, so pleasing as to induce us to eat or drink when we are not thirsty or hungry, or after thirst and hunger are satisfied; water, for instance, for drink, and bread or the like for meat?
- Is there any difference between knowledge and prudence? If there is any, which of the two is most eligible?
- Is it justifiable to put private men to death, for the sake of public safety or tranquillity, who have committed no crime? As, in the case of the plague, to stop infection; or as in the case of the Welshmen here executed?
- If the sovereign power attempts to deprive a subject of his right (or, which is the same thing, of what he thinks his right), is it justifiable in him to resist, if he is able?
- Which is best: to make a friend of a wise and good man that is poor or of a rich man that is neither wise nor good?
- Does it not, in a general way, require great study and intense application for a poor man to become rich and powerful, if he would do it without the forfeiture of honesty?
- Does it not require as much pains, study, and application to become truly wise and strictly virtuous as to become rich?
- Whence comes the dew that stands on the outside of a tankard that has cold water in it in the summer time?
From Carl Van Doren’s biography. “New members had to stand up with their hands on their breasts and say they loved mankind in general and truth for truth’s sake. … In time the Junto had so many applications for membership it was at a loss to know how to limit itself to the twelve originally planned.”
Geomagic
From Lee Sallows:
(Thanks, Lee!)
Points of Pride
She’s the girl that makes the thing that drills the hole that holds the spring
That drives the rod that turns the knob that works the thingumebob,
And it’s the girl that makes the thing that holds that oil that oils the ring
That works the thingumebob THAT’S GOING TO WIN THE WAR!
“I’ve Danced With a Man, Who’s Danced With a Girl, Who’s Danced With the Prince of Wales”
Dr. Polycarp was, as you all know, an unusually sallow bimetallist. ‘There,’ people of wide experience would say, ‘There goes the sallowest bimetallist in Cheshire.’
— G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, 1904
Query
From Gerald Lynton Kaufman’s The Book of Modern Puzzles (1954):
- All DROONS are the same size and shape.
- All green SLACKENS are the same size and shape.
- Twenty DROONS just fill up a MULDRUFF.
- All WALLAXES contain green SLACKENS.
- A green SLACKEN is 10% bigger than a DROON.
- A WALLAX is smaller than a MULDRUFF.
“If all MULDRUFFS and all WALLAXES are predominantly RED throughout, what is the largest possible number of green SLACKENS in a WALLAX?”
Eight. If a MULDRUFF holds 20 DROONS, and a green SLACKEN is 10% bigger than a DROON, then a MULDRUFF can accommodate at most 18 green SLACKENS. And if a WALLAX is smaller than this, then it can hold at most 17 green SLACKENS. But if each WALLAX is predominantly red, then the proportion of green SLACKENS in its contents can’t be more than one-half. So the largest number of green SLACKENS it can contain is 8.
11/22/2025 UPDATE: This is just wrong. Let a DROON have size 1. Then a MULDRUFF has capacity 20, and a green SLACKEN has size 1.1. So our MULDRUFF will accommodate 9 green SLACKENs (= 9.9) and 10 DROONS (= 19.9 < 20). Now we can transfer this cargo to a WALLAX of, say, capacity 19.95 and fulfill the terms of the problem with 9 (not 8) green SLACKENS -- the WALLAX remains predominantly red by both number and volume. Thanks to everyone who wrote in about this. [/spoiler]