Turnabout

In 2011 I published a list of unusual American girls’ names collected by H.L. Mencken in his magisterial study The American Language. I should have gone back for the boys’ names:

Allmouth
Anvil
Arson
Centurlius
Cho-Wella
Clarmond
Cluke
Comma
Crellon
Cyclone
Doke
Elesten
Elgne
Elvcyd
Felmet
Florns
Habert
Harce
Human
Jat
Kark
Kleo Murl
Koith
Lig
Loarn
Mord
Murt
Quannah
Rephord
Terbert
Thrantham
Torl
Valourd
Virgle
Yick
Zelmer
Zurr

“In Connecticut, a generation or two ago, there was a politico surnamed Bill whose given-names were Kansas Nebraska. He had brothers named Lecompton Constitution and Emancipation Proclamation, and sisters named Louisiana Purchase and Missouri Compromise.”

(H.L. Mencken, The American Language, Supplement 2, 1948.)

January 10, 2024January 9, 2024 | Language · Society

Time’s Up

A perplexing question by the Soviet science writer Yakov Perelman:

If a clock takes three seconds to strike three, how long does it take to strike seven?

	Select Click for Answer
Nine seconds. As the clock strikes three it’s marking two intervals, one between the first and second strikes and another between the second and third. If the three strikes unfold in three seconds, then each interval is 1.5 seconds long. In striking seven the clock marks six such intervals, so this takes 1.5 × 6 = 9 seconds. From Perelman’s For Young Mathematicians (1924), via Quantum, November-December 1992 (“Kaleidoscope,” pp. 32-33).

Click for Answer

January 9, 2024January 8, 2024 | Puzzles

Looking Around

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:El_Ojo_island.png — Image: Wikimedia Commons

The delta of Argentina’s Paraná River contains a rotating eye. “El Ojo” is a circular floating island 118 meters wide that spins in place within a slightly larger circular lake. It’s been there, silently turning, for at least 20 years — Google Earth confirms its presence in 2003.

See “A Revolving Ice Cake.”

January 9, 2024January 8, 2024 | Oddities

Unquote

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” — Max Planck

January 8, 2024January 7, 2024 | Quotations · Science & Math

Relative

A problem from the October 1962 issue of Eureka, the journal of the Cambridge University Mathematical Society:

Tom is twice as old as Dick was when Tom was half as old as Dick will be when Tom is twice as old as Dick was when Tom was a year younger than Dick is now. Dick is twice as old as Tom was when Dick was half as old as Tom was when Dick was half as old as Tom was two years ago. How old are Dick and Tom?

	Select Click for Answer
Tom is 30, Dick 26.

January 8, 2024January 7, 2024 | Puzzles

“Love Cools Quickly”

Irish proverbs:

Laziness is a load.
A good run is better than a long stand.
The tools are half of the trade.
Bribery can split a stone.
The pleasant humorous people are all in eternity.
A promise is a debt.
What cannot be had is just what suits.
It is better to be alone than in bad company.
It is easier to scatter than to gather.
The horses die while the grass is growing.
Be afraid and you’ll be safe.
The deed will praise itself.
Poverty is no shame.
It is better to be lucky than wise.
Tell me your company and I’ll tell who you are.
Time is a good historian.
Self-love is blind.
Avarice is the foundation of every evil.
Patience conquers destiny.
Nothing is preferable to reconciliation.

And “There is no forest without as much brushwood as will burn it.”

January 7, 2024January 6, 2024 | Quotations · Society

Working Out

A problem by Polish mathematician Paul Vaderlind:

Each child in a school plays either tennis or soccer. One-ninth of the tennis players also play soccer, and one-seventh of the soccer players also play tennis. Do more than half the children play tennis?

	Select Click for Answer
Some number of kids play both sports. Call that n. Nine times this many play tennis, and seven times this many play soccer. So it follows that 8n play tennis only, 6n play soccer only, and there are n + 8n + 6n kids altogether. The proportion of kids who play tennis is 9n to 15n, or 3/5, which is more than half. From Vaderlind’s excellent 2002 book The Inquisitive Problem Solver, with Richard Guy and Loren Larson.

Click for Answer

January 6, 2024January 5, 2024 | Puzzles

Paperwork

Doubtless time travel will raise a host of legal difficulties, e.g., should a time traveler who punches his younger self (or vice versa) be charged with assault? Should the time traveler who murders someone and then flees into the past for sanctuary be tried in the past for his crime committed in the future? If he marries in the past can he be tried for bigamy even though his other wife will not be born for almost 5000 years? Etc., etc. I leave such questions for lawyers and writers of ethics textbooks to solve.

— Larry Dwyer, “Time Travel and Some Alleged Logical Asymmetries Between Past and Future,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 8:1 (March 1978), 15-38

January 5, 2024 | Crime · Oddities · Society

Deluge

Dry Falls, in central Washington, has a stunningly dramatic history: At the end of the last glaciation, when ice dams to the east gave way, torrents of water roared through the landscape from flooded Montana, pouring over a 400-foot rock face at 65 mph in a waterfall five times as wide as Niagara and carrying 10 times the flow of all the world’s rivers combined.

The scale of the cataclysm is hard to imagine, so geologist Nick Zentner of Central Washington University commissioned these animations from Newlands & Company of Portland to help to convey its magnitude.

January 5, 2024January 4, 2024 | Science & Math