A puzzle by A. Khalamaizer: Move three of these circles to make the triangle point downward.
A Late Work
This famous adagio is commonly attributed to the 18th-century Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni (1671–1751). In fact it was written in 1958. Musicologist Remo Giazotto said he’d found a fragment of an unfinished Albinoni trio sonata in a Dresden library shortly after World War II and composed a new one-movement work based on two thematic ideas and a figured bass. At most these are Albinoni’s only contributions to the work. In fact Giazotto never produced the manuscript fragment, and no record of its existence has been found in the library records, so it’s conceivable, though far from certain, that Giazotto invented the story of the discovery and in fact composed the whole piece himself.
Math Notes
The prime factorization of 255987 is 33 × 19 × 499.
That’s not very interesting. But when this is expressed in binary, it reads:
111110011111110011 = 1111 × 10011 × 111110011
Each side of that equation comprises the same string of digits.
Black and White
I don’t know who devised this; I found it in The Batsford Chess Puzzle Book (2002). Black has only a king and a bishop, while White still has all 16 of his men. But Black threatens to take White’s knight, giving mate immediately. If each side uses every legal expedient, what will be the outcome? For a start, White can stave off mate with 1. Bh2!
Pardon?
What word has kst in the middle, and at the end, and in at the beginning?
“Lines to a Lady of Quality, With the Gift of a Jaguar”
All teeth and claws, behold this little Jaguar!
A fit companion for the kind of Haguar.
— D.B. Wyndham Lewis
In a Word
anatine: of or pertaining to, resembling or characteristic of, a duck
cancrine: having the qualities of a crab
caprine: of or relating to a goat
columbine: of, belonging to, or of the nature of, a dove or pigeon
formicine: of, or of the nature of, ants
fringilline: pertaining to the finches
hippotigrine: of or relating to a zebra
leporine: relating to a hare
lutrine: relating to the otter family
musteline: of or like a weasel
pavonine: of, relating to, resembling, or characteristic of a peacock
procyonine: of raccoons
sciurine: of or relating to squirrels
suilline: of or relating to pigs
talpine: relating to the moles
viverrine: resembling or related to the civet
vulpine: characteristic of a fox
“The sight of an old limping horse, tugged forward by one man while another kept beating it with a stick to get it to the knacker’s yard at Colmar, haunted me for weeks,” wrote Albert Schweitzer in his 1924 memoir. “So when my mother had prayed with me and had kissed me good-night, I used to add silently a prayer that I had composed myself for all living creatures. It ran thus: ‘O, heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath; guard them from all evil, and let them sleep in peace.'”
Making Sense
“Genuine works of art carry their own aesthetic theory implicit within them and suggest the standards according to which they are to be judged.” — Goethe, letter, 1808
Dead Man’s Chest
Five pirates of different ages want to divide a treasure of 100 gold coins. They agree that the oldest among them will propose how to divide the coins, and then all the pirates will vote on the proposal. If more than half the pirates support it, it will be adopted and the coins distributed accordingly. Otherwise the proposer will be thrown overboard and the process repeated with the remaining pirates.
If all five pirates are smart, rational, greedy, and fearful of death, what will happen?
Morton’s Fork
John Morton, Lord Chancellor under Henry VII, used a universal argument to demand gifts for the royal treasury:
- If a man lived well, he was obviously rich.
- If a man lived modestly, he obviously had savings.
Either way, he could afford the tax. Francis Bacon wrote, “There is a tradition of a dilemma that Bishop Morton … used to raise up the benevolence to higher rates; and some called it his Fork.”