Many-Sided Story

From Ed Southall’s Twitter feed, a polygon name builder:

A 55-sided figure is a pentacontapentagon; one with 79 sides is a heptacontaenneagon. A system exists to go even higher: A figure with 9,000 sides is an enakischiliagon, and one with a million is a megagon.

René Descartes suggested the 1,000-sided chiliagon as an example of a thing that can be considered without being explicitly imagined; one “does not imagine the thousand sides or see them as if they were present.” So the intellect is not dependent on imagination.

May 23, 2019May 22, 2019 | Language · Science & Math

Shibboleths

In a 1954 essay, “The English Aristocracy,” Nancy Mitford observed that English class consciousness had permeated the language itself, so that using the wrong term betrayed a lack of breeding. She had been inspired by linguist Alan S.C. Ross, who distinguished upper-class (“U”) terms from those used by the middle class:

U	Non-U
Bike or Bicycle	Cycle
Dinner jacket	Dress suit
Knave (cards)	Jack
Vegetables	Greens
Ice	Ice cream
Scent	Perfume
They’ve a very nice house	They have (got) a lovely home
Ill (in bed)	Sick (in bed)
Looking-glass	Mirror
Chimneypiece	Mantelpiece
Graveyard	Cemetery
Spectacles	Glasses
False teeth	Dentures
Die	Pass on
Mad	Mental
Jam	Preserve
Napkin	Serviette
Sofa	Settee or couch
Lavatory or loo	Toilet
Rich	Wealthy
Good health	Cheers
Lunch	Dinner (for midday meal)
Pudding	Sweet
Drawing-room	Lounge
Writing-paper	Note-paper
What?	Pardon?
How d’you do?	Pleased to meet you
Wireless	Radio
(School)master, mistress	Teacher

Ross added, “It is solely by their language that the upper classes nowadays are distinguished since they are neither cleaner, richer, nor better-educated than anybody else.” Mitford said she’d written the essay “In order to demonstrate the upper middle class does not merge imperceptibly into the middle class.”

The essay touched off a vigorous national debate about English snobbery; Mitford’s essay was published in a 1956 book, Noblesse Oblige, to which John Betjeman contributed a mordant poem, “How to Get On in Society”:

Phone for the fish knives, Norman
As cook is a little unnerved;
You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes
And I must have things daintily served.

Are the requisites all in the toilet?
The frills round the cutlets can wait
Till the girl has replenished the cruets
And switched on the logs in the grate.

It’s ever so close in the lounge dear,
But the vestibule’s comfy for tea
And Howard is riding on horseback
So do come and take some with me

Now here is a fork for your pastries
And do use the couch for your feet;
I know that I wanted to ask you-
Is trifle sufficient for sweet?

Milk and then just as it comes dear?
I’m afraid the preserve’s full of stones;
Beg pardon, I’m soiling the doileys
With afternoon tea-cakes and scones.

(Alan S.C. Ross, “Linguistic Class-Indicators in Present-Day English.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 55:1 [1954], 20-56.)

May 22, 2019May 22, 2019 | Language

Fitting

subscribers trivium

… is an 11-letter word that contains 11 curved lines and 11 straight lines.

(Discovered by Susan Thorpe.)

May 22, 2019May 21, 2019 | Trivia

Please Help!

I spend hundreds of hours each month researching and writing Futility Closet, and that effort is supported entirely by the readers. If you value this site, please consider making a contribution to help keep it going.

You can make a one-time donation on our Support Us page, or you can pledge a monthly contribution to get bonus posts and other rewards. You choose the amount to contribute, and you can change or cancel it at any time.

Thanks for your support, and thanks for reading!

Greg

May 21, 2019May 21, 2019 | Uncategorized

A Rapid Sum

From Lewis Carroll’s diary, Feb. 5, 1856:

Varied the lesson at the school with a story, introducing a number of sums to be worked out. I also worked for them the puzzle of writing the answer to an addition sum, when only one of the five rows have been written: this … astonished them not a little.

He had started by writing an arbitrary number:

21879

Then he asked the students to call out a second five-digit number. Carroll added a third, the students shouted a fourth, and Carroll added a fifth and immediately wrote the sum:

How did he do this?

	Select Click for Answer
In writing the third and fifth numbers, he just wrote the complement of 9 for each digit in the number immediately above. When this is done, the sum can be found immediately by taking the first number, subtracting 2 from its last digit, and inserting a 2 at the front of the number.

May 21, 2019May 20, 2019 | Science & Math

Makes Sense

THREE = 03

Advance each character in that expression four steps in the alphabet or the number line and you get:

XLVII = 47

(Discovered by Dave Morice and Daniel McGrath. From “Kickshaws,” Word Ways 32:4 [November 1999], 283-293.)

May 20, 2019 | Trivia

Podcast Episode 249: The Robbers Cave Experiment

robbers cave

In 1954 a social psychologist started a war between two teams of fifth graders at an Oklahoma summer camp. He wanted to investigate the sources of human conflict and how people might overcome them. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll review the Robbers Cave Experiment and examine its evolving reputation.

We’ll also dredge up a Dalek and puzzle over a hazardous job.

See full show notes …

May 20, 2019May 27, 2019 | Podcast · Science & Math · Society

Audition

In January 1942, a series of letters to the Daily Telegraph complained that the newspaper’s crossword was too easy — anyone might solve it in a matter of minutes, they said. Accordingly the chairman of a London club offered to donate £100 to charity if anyone could solve a given crossword in 12 minutes. Editor Arthur Watson arranged a competition in the paper’s Fleet Street newsroom, and five people won the competition (though the fastest was later disqualified for misspelling a word). Several were later hired to work at Bletchley Park breaking German military codes.

The Telegraph published the “time test” puzzle later that month, and presented it again in 2014, inviting readers to try to solve it in 12 minutes. “Could you have been a codebreaker at Bletchley Park?”

May 19, 2019 | Puzzles

Miniatures

Last August, researchers at Rome University produced tiny portraits of Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin by modifying E. coli cells to respond to light patterns. Bacteria that received more light would swim faster, so over time they tended to concentrate in the darker parts of a negative image.

Lead author Giacomo Frangipane said in a statement, “Much like pedestrians who slow down their walking speed when they encounter a crowd, or cars that are stuck in traffic, swimming bacteria will spend more time in slower regions than in faster ones.”

Using the same technique, they created a (tiny) version of the Mona Lisa.

May 18, 2019 | Science & Math

Drawing Customers

Seoul’s Drawing Cafe is styled like a two-dimensional cartoon. Inspired by the Korean television show W, in which characters move between the real world and a fantasy world inside a webtoon, the café has designed its furniture, walls, floors, mugs, dishes, and cutlery to look like flat line drawings.