Georges Perec worked out that the French phrase andin basnoda a une epouse qui pue (“Andin Basnoda has a smelly wife”) reads the same upside down.
Typographer Pierre di Sciullo created a typeface to honor this ambigram — he called it Basnoda.
Georges Perec worked out that the French phrase andin basnoda a une epouse qui pue (“Andin Basnoda has a smelly wife”) reads the same upside down.
Typographer Pierre di Sciullo created a typeface to honor this ambigram — he called it Basnoda.
Each year since 1993, the Literary Review has presented a Bad Sex in Fiction Award “to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it.” Here’s 2013’s winner, Manil Suri, in his novel The City of Devi:
Surely supernovas explode that instant, somewhere, in some galaxy. The hut vanishes, and with it the sea and the sands — only Karun’s body, locked with mine, remains. We streak like superheroes past suns and solar systems, we dive through shoals of quarks and atomic nuclei. In celebration of our breakthrough fourth star, statisticians the world over rejoice.
In a retrograde analysis puzzle, one tries to deduce the history of a game from the current state of play. The most familiar examples concern chess, but Smith College mathematician Jim Henle worked out that it can also be done in baseball. This is the batting order of the Mudville Slugs:
We’re told also that in the ninth inning Casey came to bat for the fourth time, while the bases were loaded with two men out. Casey struck out, leaving the team with another loss. How many runs did Mudville score altogether?
By Nevit Dilmen. How many sticks do you see?
Memorable excerpts from the detective fiction of Michael Avallone (1924-1999):
This and my recent post on Robert Leslie Bellem were inspired by Bill Pronzini, who has written two appreciations of rapturously bad mystery fiction.
Drive east along the shore of Lake Erie toward the town of Port Colborne, Ontario, and the mill before you appears to shrink, rather than grow, as you approach.
Similar: The Rowes Wharf Arch Anomaly:
See The Vista Paradox.
“Suppose there was a pond, around which four poor men built their houses, thus:”
“Suppose four evil-disposed rich men afterwards built houses around the poor people, thus:”
“… and wished to have all the water of the pond to themselves. How could they build a high wall, so as to shut out the poor people from the pond?”
By Robert William Petrick, a perfectly requited sentiment.
Notable allusions to unrecorded cases of Sherlock Holmes:
Each of the first 18 multiples of 526315789473684210 contains all 10 digits:
526315789473684210 x 1 = 526315789473684210 526315789473684210 x 2 = 1052631578947368420 526315789473684210 x 3 = 1578947368421052630 526315789473684210 x 4 = 2105263157894736840 526315789473684210 x 5 = 2631578947368421050 526315789473684210 x 6 = 3157894736842105260 526315789473684210 x 7 = 3684210526315789470 526315789473684210 x 8 = 4210526315789473680 526315789473684210 x 9 = 4736842105263157890 526315789473684210 x 10 = 5263157894736842100 526315789473684210 x 11 = 5789473684210526310 526315789473684210 x 12 = 6315789473684210520 526315789473684210 x 13 = 6842105263157894730 526315789473684210 x 14 = 7368421052631578940 526315789473684210 x 15 = 7894736842105263150 526315789473684210 x 16 = 8421052631578947360 526315789473684210 x 17 = 8947368421052631570 526315789473684210 x 18 = 9473684210526315780
The 19th multiple, alas, is 9999999999999999990.