“Ethel administers necessary discipline to Archie and Quentin.” Theodore Roosevelt drew this picture of three of his children on White House stationery in 1904. Ethel would have been 12, Archie 10, and Quentin 6.
Roosevelt wrote elsewhere, “I don’t think that any family has ever enjoyed the White House more than we have.”
Two trains, A and B, start simultaneously from opposite ends of a 450-mile track. Each travels nonstop at a uniform speed to the opposite end. A finishes its journey 4 hours after passing B, and B finishes its journey 9 hours after passing A. What were their speeds?
Richard Garfield, creator of Magic: The Gathering, offered this innovative problem at the Ninth World Puzzle Championship in 2000:
“Add the weights and balloons to the diagram so that the entire mechanism is in equilibrium. As with normal balance puzzles, the total torque at each fulcrum must be zero.” The weights and balloons can be attached only at the designated blue points. Each beam is graduated, though that can be a bit hard to see here — click to enlarge.
Annie, Betty, Carrie, Darla, and Eve all have the same birthday, but all are different ages. On their shared birthday:
Whenever one of them spoke to someone older than herself, everything she said was true, but when she spoke to someone younger, everything she said was false. How old is each person?
From 1906 to his death in 1922, Hungarian novelist Géza Gárdonyi kept a secret journal in a script so inscrutable that it wasn’t deciphered until 1965. He’d labeled the work a Tibetan grammar, but in fact it employed a calligraphic code founded in Hungarian using symbols that Gárdonyi had devised himself. In it he recorded his thoughts, observations, and literary plans. It was published in 1974 as Titkosnapló (“secret diary”).
From the Fall 1983 issue of Pi Mu Epsilon Journal, a wordless proof by Purdue University freshman Hao-Nhen Qua. Vu:
“In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in the case of poetry, it’s the exact opposite!” — Paul Dirac
For his 1959 work Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle, Yves Klein sold the ownership of empty space.
In its 1967 Air-Conditioning Show, English conceptual collaborative Art & Language presented an empty room containing two air conditioning units; the artwork was “what is felt and said about it.”
James Lee Byars’ 1969 work The Ghost of James Lee Byars consisted of the emptiness and darkness of a pitch-black room.
Robert Barry communicated his 1969 Telepathic Piece mentally to visitors; the artwork was “a series of thoughts that are not applicable to language or image.”
Andy Warhol’s 1985 Invisible Sculpture was entirely intangible.
Tom Friedman’s 1992 work Untitled (A Curse)” consisted of a region of empty space that had been cursed by a witch.
Roman Ondak’s 2006 work More Silent Than Ever was an empty exhibition room in which a covert listening device had allegedly been hidden; visitors were told they were being monitored, but no evidence was ever given that the device really existed.
Salvatore Garau’s 2021 sculpture Io Sono occupied an area 5 feet square but was otherwise imperceptible.
Ruben Gutierrez’s 2022 work This Sculpture Makes Me Cry (A Spell) was said to represent what the artist could not see but which affected him emotionally.
Warhol and Gutierrez both presented their sculptures on white pedestals. Is there any way to prove they’re not the same piece?
A puzzle by N. Avilov, from the Russian science magazine Kvant. Prove that the shaded region of this pentagram takes up half its area.
Okay, that’s enough of that.
