Made to Order

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/218/mode/2up?view=theater

Back in 2007 I noted the report of a curious wager in Berkshire in 1811: Sir John Throckmorton of Newbury bet a thousand guineas that he could have a coat made between sunrise and sunset of a single summer’s day, from the shearing of the sheep to the finished coat’s delivery by the tailor.

This appears to be true — in 1899 the Strand published a retrospective of the feat, including the first photo of the finished coat and the remarks of 93-year-old Charles Coxeter, the sole surviving witness and the younger brother of John Coxeter, the cloth manufacturer who had superintended most of the work. The sheep had been sheared at 5 a.m., and by 6:20 p.m. Throckmorton was able to don the finish coat before a crowd of 5,000 people, an hour and three-quarters before the deadline.

Coxeter was a curiously ambitious man: After the Battle of Waterloo he sponsored the preparation of a plum pudding 20 feet long, “which was cooked under the supervision of twelve ladies.” The “monster pudding” was carried to his house on a timber wagon drawn by two oxen and declared by all who partook “as nice as mother makes ’em.”

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/218/mode/2up?view=theater

Express

https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzae061
Image: Mind

For his article “A Universal Money Pump for the Myopic, Naive, and Minimally Sophisticated,” in the April 2025 issue of Mind, philosopher Johan Gustafsson devised this minimal paradoxical stairway to illustrate a cyclic ranking: A appears higher than B, B appears higher than C, and C appears higher than A.

Two other perplexities, while we’re at it — by Mike Tolleb:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Faux_Escalier.JPG
Image: Wikimedia Commons

And by Wikimedia user Mabit1:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unmoegliches_Objekt_4.svg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

(Thanks, Johan.)

Buridan’s Bridge

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buridan%27s_bridge.jpg

Socrates wants to cross a river and comes to a bridge guarded by Plato. The two speak as follows:

Plato: ‘Socrates, if in the first proposition which you utter, you speak the truth, I will permit you to cross. But surely, if you speak falsely, I shall throw you into the water.’

Socrates: ‘You will throw me into the water.’

Jean Buridan posed this conundrum in his Sophismata in the 14th century. Like a similar paradox in Don Quixote, it seems to leave the guardian in an impossible position — whether Socrates speaks truly or falsely, it would seem, the promise cannot be fulfilled.

Some readers offered a wry solution: Wait until he’s crossed the bridge, and then throw him in.

An Inescapable Truth

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ambigramme_de_Georges_Perec_-_andin_basnoda_a_une_epouse_qui_pue_-_animation.gif

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.

A Book Toilet

den wolsack book toilet

In 1772, wool merchant François Adrien Van den Bogaert commissioned a garden pavilion for Den Wolsack, his house in Antwerp. On the first floor is a bibliophile’s lavatory, in which the bowl is concealed in a fancifully rendered stack of books.

The volumes on the surrounding shelves aren’t real; they’re made of wood covered with leather.

(Thanks, Serge.)

“Geographical Enigma”

https://archive.org/details/StrandVolume22/page/n117/mode/2up?view=theater

Charles Craik of Weston-super-Mare received this enigmatic postcard from a friend in 1901 and sent it on to the Strand:

I think it rather cleverly done, and it took me some time before I could understand its meaning.

The principal message is on the big island in the centre of the map — an invitation to meet the sender at a café, with the day. The name of the island below on the left-hand side is at once translated, ‘If so, do.’ The names of the land at the bottom of the map are meant for ‘Same time and place as before’ and ‘Don’t let anything hinder you’ respectively.

The following is a translation beginning at the top and working to the right: ‘Straights of cash. If you don’t come, all sorts of ills befall you. Come early. Let me know if you can come or not. I say, there’s a peculiar thing! You’re getting it by degrees. Can’t you see? Bay rhum. Get your hair cut! Deuced bad straights. See you later. Don’t you see? Devil take you. You are a merry cus! Good old flipper. Love to all. Oh! Tut, tut. R.S.V.P. Yours ever, Guy.’