A conundrum from Henry Ernest Dudeney, Modern Puzzles, 1926:
Dora Crackham one morning produced a slip of paper bearing the jumble of figures shown in our illustration. She said that a young mathematician had this poser presented to him by his betrothed when she was in a playful mood.
“What am I to do with it?” asked George.
“Just interpret its meaning,” she replied. “If it is properly regarded it should not be difficult to decipher.”
What did she mean?
Said the chemist, “I’ll take some dimethyloximidomesoralamide
And I’ll add just a dash of dimethylamidoazobensaldehyde;
But if these won’t mix,
I’ll just have to fix
Up a big dose of trisodiumpholoroglucintricarboxycide.”
Mr. Evelyn mentions a Dutch boy, eight or nine years old, who was carried about by his parents as a show. He had about the iris of one eye the words Deus meus, and about the other Eloihim, in the Hebrew characters. How this was done by artifice none could imagine, and his parents affirmed he was born so.
— Sketches of Imposture, Deception, and Credulity, 1845
In 1924, university professor Hidesamuro Ueno brought his dog, Hachiko, to Tokyo. Every morning Hachiko saw his master off at the front door, and every evening he greeted him at the nearby train station.
The professor died in May 1925, but the faithful dog still went to the station every day to wait for him.
He kept this up for 10 years.
The dog became a national sensation in 1932, when this story was published, and he’s since been the subject of books and movies. Today a bronze statue stands at Shibuya Station, where he kept his vigil.
The Rev. Ralph William Lyonel Tollemache-Tollemache (1826–1895) got a bit carried away in naming his children:
Lyulph’s name forms an acronym, LYONEL THE SECOND. In Finnegans Wake, Joyce parodied this with Helmingham Erchenwyne Rutter Egbert Crumwall Odin Maximus Esme Saxon Esa Vercingetorix Ethelwulf Rupprecht Ydwalla Bentley Osmund Dysart Yggdrasselmann — whose initials spell HERE COMES EVERYBODY.
I’ll give you a million dollars if you intend to drink this poison.
You don’t actually have to drink it. I’ll pay you immediately, and then you’re perfectly free to change your mind.
Can you do this?
(Posed by University of California political philosopher Gregory Kavka.)
On the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the winning numbers in the New York lottery were 9-1-1.
mislive
v. to lead a wicked life
Suppose that a person take an even number of coins or counters, or any such in one hand, and an odd number in the other, there is a simple method by which to tell in which hand the even number is. Ask the person to multiply the number in the right hand by an odd number, and the number in the left hand by an even number; then tell the person to add the two products together and tell you if the sum total be odd or even. If the sum be even, the even number is in the right hand, and if it be odd the even number is in the left hand.
— Miscellaneous Notes and Queries, January 1892
Vladimir Nabokov composed chess problems. Here’s a clever one from 1932: “White retracts its last move and mates in one.”
This is an instance of retrograde analysis: Of the many legal moves that White might just have made, only one can be revised to yield an immediate mate. Can you find it?
