A puzzle from MIT Technology Review, September-October 1999: A popular pastime at Bell Labs in the 1970s was to identify a word that contains a given string of letters — for example, OOKKEE is found in BOOKKEEPER. Michael Foster found English words that contain HIPE, HCR, and UFA. What are they?
Search Results for: in a word
Podcast Episode 299: Ursula Graham Bower and the Nagas
In 1937, Englishwoman Ursula Graham Bower became fascinated by the Naga people of northeastern India. She was living among them when World War II broke out and Japan threatened to invade their land. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll describe Bower’s efforts to organize the Nagas against an unprecedented foe.
We’ll also consider a self-censoring font and puzzle over some perplexing spacecraft.
Update
Hi, all. Just another update here — all the libraries here are still closed, so I need to keep the Futility Closet website suspended through June, as I can’t do the research until they reopen. We’re fine here otherwise, and we’re still producing the podcast each week in the meantime. At the moment there’s no word on when things might return to normal; if I can’t start up the site again in July then I’ll post an update here. If you have any questions you can always reach me at greg@futilitycloset.com. Stay safe!
Greg
Podcast Episode 295: An Unlikely Attempt on Everest
In 1932, Yorkshireman Maurice Wilson chose a startling way to promote his mystical beliefs: He would fly to Mount Everest and climb it alone. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow Wilson’s misguided adventure, which one writer called “the most incredible story in all the eventful history of Mount Everest.”
Well also explore an enigmatic musician and puzzle over a mighty cola.
Podcast Episode 292: Fordlandia
In 1927, Henry Ford decided to build a plantation in the Amazon to supply rubber for his auto company. The result was Fordlandia, an incongruous Midwestern-style town in the tropical rainforest. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll describe the checkered history of Ford’s curious project — and what it revealed about his vision of society.
We’ll also consider some lifesaving seagulls and puzzle over a false alarm.
For What It’s Worth
In a 2009 survey, readers of Stuttgarter Nachrichten, the largest newspaper in Stuttgart, chose Muggeseggele as the most beautiful word in Swabian German.
Muggeseggele means “the scrotum of a housefly.” It’s used ironically to describe a very small length.
Counting Sheep
Shepherds in Northern England used to tally their flocks using a base-20 numbering system. They’d count a score of sheep using the words:
Yan, tan, tether, mether, pip,
Azer, sayzer, acka, konta, dick,
Yanna-dick, tanna-dick, tethera-dick, methera-dick, bumfit,
Yanna-bum, tanna-bum, tethera-bum, methera-bum, jigget
… and then denote the completion of a group by taking up a stone or marking the ground before commencing the next count.
These systems vary by region — Wikipedia has them laid out in pleasing tables.
(Thanks, Brieuc.)
Disharmony
Dutch writer Gerard Nolst Trenité’s 1920 poem “The Chaos” is a polemic on the senselessness of English pronunciation:
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, hear and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word.
Sword and sward, retain and Britain
(Mind the latter how it’s written).
Made has not the sound of bade,
Say–said, pay–paid, laid but plaid.
“It Is Not Enough to Mean Well”
Maxims of Theodore Roosevelt:
- A bad man of ability is worse than a bad man of no ability.
- It is almost as irritating to be patronized as to be wronged.
- Timid endurance of wrongdoing may often be to commit one of the greatest evils that one can possibly commit against one’s fellows.
- The lives of truest heroism are those in which there are no great deeds to look back upon. It is the little things well done that go to make up a successful and truly good life.
- Our system of government is the best in the world for a people able to carry it on. Only the highest type of people can carry it on.
- No one ought to submit to being imposed upon, but before you act always stop to consider the rights of others before standing up for your own.
- The wicked who prosper are never a pleasant sight.
- It is hard to fail; but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
- Don’t let practical politics mean foul politics.
- For almost every gain there is a penalty.
- There is grave danger in attempting to establish invariable rules.
- Woe to all of us if ever as a people we grow to condone evil because it is successful.
- Remember that the shots that count in war are the ones that hit.
- What every man needs is robust virtue, that will enable him to go out into the world and remain true to himself.
- Capacity for work is absolutely necessary, and no man can be said to live in the true sense of the word if he does not work.
- In doing your work in the great world, it is a safe plan to follow a rule I once heard preached on the football field: Don’t flinch; don’t fall; hit the the line hard.
Ghosts in Color
From Reddit: Stare at the red dot on this woman’s nose for 30 seconds, then look at a white wall and blink.
I was surprised, and agreeably amused, with the following experiment. I covered a paper about four inches square with yellow, and with a pen filled with a blue colour wrote upon the middle of it the word BANKS in capitals, and sitting with my back to the sun, fixed my eyes for a minute exactly on the centre of the letter N in the middle of the word; after closing my eyes, and shading them somewhat with my hand, the word was distinctly seen in the spectrum in yellow letters on a blue field; and then, on opening my eyes on a yellowish wall at twenty feet distance, the magnified name of BANKS appeared written on the wall in golden characters.