In Other News

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:D%C3%A9part_de_la_harpie.jpeg

This monster was found in the kingdom of Santa Fe, Peru, in the province of Chili and in the Lake of Fagua, located in the lands of Prosper Voston. It emerged during the night in order to devour the swine, cows and bulls of the area. Its length is eleven feet; its face is roughly that of a man; its mouth is as wide as its face; it is provided with teeth two inches long; it has twenty-four-inch horns like those of a bull; its hair reaches to the ground; it has four-inch ears like those of an ass; it has two batlike wings; its thighs and legs are twenty-five inches long and its claws eight; it has two tails, one very flexible and provided with rings that help it seize its prey, and the other ending in a dart which helps it kill; its entire body is covered with scales. The monster was captured by many men who had laid traps into which it fell. It was entangled in nets and brought alive to the viceroy, who succeeded in nourishing it with a steer, a cow, a bull, given to it every day with three or four swine, to which it is quite partial. As it would be necessary to load too great a quantity of cattle to nourish it during the crossing, which takes at least five or six months to pass Cape Horn, the viceroy has sent orders along the entire land route to provide for the needs of this unique monster while making it march by stages to the Gulf of Honduras, where it will embark for Havana. From there to the Bermudas, to the Azores, and in three weeks it will disembark at Cadiz. From Cadiz it will be taken by short trips to the royal family. It is hoped that the female will be captured so that the species will not die out in Europe. The species seems to be that of harpies, heretofore considered legendary.

— Courier de L’Europe, Oct. 22 and 29, 1784

(Another hoax, but a widely credited one. From the Bibliothèque Nationale: “This monster frequently emerged from Lake Fagua at night to devour pigs, cows and bulls. It has even been caught using nets; but needs feeding daily with an ox, cow or bull and three or four pigs.”)

| Hoaxes · Oddities

The Europa Redux Manuscript

https://www.instagram.com/europaredux/

In 2020 Brooklyn’s Honey & Wax Bookseller came into possession of a strange manuscript consisting of 7,000 illustrations, each 3 centimeters square. The images fill 106 loose sheets that often mimic European tourist brochures, and most bear captions that resemble no known language. The manuscript appears to have been created in Switzerland in the 1940s, but no one knows who created it or why. Notre Dame historian of science Robert Goulding wrote, “The fact that [the words] don’t seem to conform to any language or phonemes in any language is suspicious … suggesting to me that they are either a cipher, or there is some method or algorithm used to generate the words.”

The images can be viewed here; more information is here.

| Oddities · Puzzles

Lacunae

Demetri Martin’s 2012 book This Is a Book contains a page marked “This page unintentionally left blank.”

The first page of this edition of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 essay Anti-Semite and Jew is marked “This Page Intentionally No Longer Blank”.

At the start of Australian children’s author Andy Griffiths’ 1999 book Just Stupid!, a cartoon snail tells the reader, “This page would be blank if I were not here telling you that this page would be blank if I were not here telling you that …”

Reza Amirkhani’s 2000 novel Man-e-oo contains a whole chapter of blank pages.

Idries Shah’s The Book of the Book spends 10 pages explaining why the pages that follow are important; these pages prove to be blank.

Don Novello’s 1977 book The Lazlo Letters ends with several otherwise empty pages marked “FREE PAPER!”

This 32-page pamphlet, published in 1880, was entirely blank:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Political_Achievements_of_the_Earl_of_Dalkeith.jpg

It worked — William Gladstone defeated Lord Eskdaill in an upset victory at Midlothian.

| Literature · Oddities

The Magic Hat Puzzler

An old puzzle from the Car Talk radio show on NPR:

You and I each draw a number from a magic hat. We don’t know each other’s numbers, but the hat ensures that they’re adjacent positive integers.

An interlocutor now begins to ask each of us in turn whether he knows the other’s number. Eventually, one of us will answer yes. Why?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Extra Large

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MaggieMurphyhoax.jpg

When this photo appeared in the Loveland [Colo.] Reporter in 1895, farmer Joseph B. Swan was besieged with requests for pieces and seeds of his giant potato — the story implied that it was 2 feet 5 inches long and weighed more than 86 pounds.

Editor W.L. Thorndyke was forced to admit the spud had been carved out of wood — they’d arranged the hoax to promote a local street fair.

| Hoaxes

Verse

https://archive.org/details/lifeofsirwilliam03gravuoft/page/502/mode/2up

This poem was composed by English mathematician George Biddell Airy, the seventh Astronomer Royal. It’s written from the point of view of the irregular polygon in the middle of the figure. If two congruent right triangles are affixed to the bottom edges of this polygon, the resulting shape has the outline of two adjoining squares of side lengths a and b, the sides of the right triangles. If the same two triangles are instead affixed above the polygon, as shown, the result is a (tilted) square whose side is the length of the triangles’ hypotenuse. This proves the Pythagorean theorem.

“Various proofs come near to this, but none which I can find comes up to it in simplicity,” wrote Augustus De Morgan to William Rowan Hamilton in 1855. “Placing the triangle in four different positions shows the proposition anatomically, without scalpel or nasty smell.”

| Science & Math

In Short

A letter from the king’s minister of finance to Zenon of Kaunos, a public official in Ptolemaic Egypt, 256 B.C.:

Apollonius to Zenon, greeting. You did right to send the chickpeas to Memphis. Farewell.

In The Complete Plain Words, his 1948 style guide for the British civil service, Sir Ernest Gowers calls this a model of concision.

| Language

The Hurt Locker

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Left,_an_%22iron_maiden%22_with_its_doors_secured;_middle,_a_bli_Wellcome_V0041743.jpg
Image: Wellcome Trust

The iron maiden, the medieval torture device consisting of a hinged cabinet with a spike-lined interior, seems to have been a myth. There’s no mention of it before the 19th century.

Bielefeld University legal historian Wolfgang Schild suggests that enterprising exhibitors may have pieced together the first specimens using artifacts gathered from museum collections, to attract paying customers. It’s possible that German philosopher Johann Philipp Siebenkees invented a history for the device — in his writings he claims that it was first used on Aug. 14, 1515, to execute a coin forger. But there’s no reliable evidence for it in the Middle Ages.

| Hoaxes · Technology

Amara’s Law

“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” — Roy Amara, president of the Institute for the Future, 1978

(“A modern maxim says: People tend to overestimate what can be done in one year and to underestimate what can be done in five or ten years.” — J.C.R. Licklider, Libraries of the Future, 1965)

| Quotations · Society · Technology

Diversion

https://archive.org/details/mad-43-man-squamish-mad-095/mode/2up

In 1965, Mad Magazine presented the rules of a deliberately incomprehensible sport. 43-Man Squamish was designed to be impossible to play, but a nameless Wikipedia editor has heroically summarized the rules:

Each team consists of one left and one right Inside Grouch, one left and one right Outside Grouch, four Deep Brooders, four Shallow Brooders, five Wicket Men, three Offensive Niblings, four Quarter-Frummerts, two Half-Frummerts, one Full-Frummert, two Overblats, two Underblats, nine Back-Up Finks, two Leapers and a Dummy—for a total of 43. The game officials are a Probate Judge (dressed as a British judge, with wig), a Field Representative (in a Scottish kilt), a Head Cockswain (in long overcoat), and a Baggage Smasher (dressed as a male beachgoer in pre–World War I years). None of the officials has any authority after play has begun.

Squamish is played on a pentagonal field, or Flutney, and the game is divided into a period of 15 minutes, known as an Ogre. Most squamish games consist of seven Ogres, unless of course, it rains. In that case, they are to play eight Ogres. Competitors wear gloves, a helmet, and flippers. They pursue the Pritz (or ball), which is 3 3/4 inches in diameter, constructed from untreated ibex hide, and is stuffed with blue jay feathers. Each player is equipped with a Frullip, a long hooked stick very similar in appearance to a shepherd’s crook that is used to impede opponents.

Before any game, the Probate Judge must first flip a coin, usually a new Spanish peseta, while the Visiting Captain guesses the toss. If he guesses correctly, the game is cancelled immediately. If not, the Home Team Captain must then decide if he wishes to play offense or defense first. Play begins after a frullip is touched to the flutney and the recitation “Mi tío es enfermo, pero la carretera es verde!”, a wise old Chilean saying that means, “My uncle is sick but the highway is green!” Penalties are applied for infractions such as walling the Pritz, icing on fifth snivel, running with the mob, rushing the season, inability to face facts, or sending the Dummy home early.

The offensive team has five Snivels to advance to the enemy goal. Carrying the Pritz across the goal line is a Woomik and scores 17 points; hitting it across with the frullip counts as a Durmish and only scores 11 points. Except in the 7th Ogre (and the 8th, if it rains), only the offensive Niblings and Overblats are allowed to score. In such cases, the four Quarter-Frummerts are allowed to kick or throw the Pritz, and the nine Finks are allowed to heckle the opposition by doing imitations of Barry Goldwater.

The teams must play a sudden-death overtime to break a tie, unless both Left Overblats are out of the game on personal fouls. If this is the case, the tie is settled by the teams lining up on opposite sides of the flutney (inherently difficult on a pentagonal shape) and shouting dirty limericks at each other until one side breaks up laughing.

When an insufficient number of players precludes a regulation 43-Man Squamish match, a simplified version may be played: 2-Man Squamish. The rules are identical, except in 2-Man Squamish, the object is to lose.

Writer Tom Koch had intended the game to be absurd, but several colleges fielded teams. Rensselaer Polytechnic issued a public challenge to Harvard; Marquette reported that its players had been suspended for “sportsmanlike conduct”; and the University of Alberta’s team boasted that “we happen to be the only undefeated Squamish team in Western Canada, mainly because we are the only team in Western Canada, and we haven’t played a game. We can’t understand why we have no opposition.”

In an ending that would have baffled the writer, Squamish is the highlight of Koch’s 2015 obituary in the New York Times, which credits him with a “vexingly convoluted game.”

| Entertainment