The Cylob Cryptogram

Visiting a London bookshop in 1995 or 1996, British musician DJ Cylob noticed a pile of booklets near the entrance, with a note indicating that they were free. He asked an assistant about them, and she said that she knew nothing, only that a mysterious person was leaving them.

Each booklet consists of 20 pages of rectangular symbols. There are no letters or numbers, not even page numbers. Analysis shows that 24 different symbols make an appearance in the collection, which is consistent with encrypted English text, though some appear only at the beginning of the booklet and other very similar symbols only at the end.

The meaning of all this has never been discovered. One possibility is that the booklet is not a message at all but a game accessory. But then why does it contain no text? And why was someone silently offering it in a London bookshop?

| Oddities

Unquote

“It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘always do what you are afraid to do.”” — Emerson

“Never go out to meet trouble. If you will just sit still, nine cases out of ten someone will intercept it before it reaches you.” — Calvin Coolidge

| Quotations

In a Word

stillicide
n. the dropping of rainwater from the eaves of a house upon another’s land or roof

sub tegmine fagi
adv. under the cover of a beech tree

tenson
n. a contest in verse between rival troubadours

| Language

Happy Returns

Famously, in a group of 23 randomly chosen people, the chance is slightly higher than 50 percent that two will share a birthday.

Here’s an interesting variant: If the group consists of an equal number of girls and boys, what’s the minimum size at which it’s probable that a girl and a boy share a birthday?

Surprisingly, the answer is only 32 (16 girls and 16 boys). If we want a girl and a boy to share the same birth month, we need only 6 children before this becomes probable.

(Tony Crilly and Shekhar Nandy, “The Birthday Problem for Boys and Girls,” Mathematical Gazette 71:455 [March 1987], 19-22. See Shared Birthdays.)

| Science & Math

Infinite Digest

https://samizdat.co/digest/notes/

To mark the 30th anniversary of Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace’s sprawling 1996 novel, Brooklyn-based data visualization artist and design professor Christian Swinehart is creating a graphical companion to the book.

Infinite Digest is a series of interactive visualizations of the novel’s plotlines, characters, and self-referential structure. The first two installments, exploring the book’s timeline and its many footnotes, are currently live, and more will appear over the next few months.

(Thanks, Christian.)

| Art · Literature

Testimonial

The gift which I am sending you is called a dog, and is in fact the most precious and valuable possession of mankind. For while other animals are each of them of use to us in virtue of one particular quality, and possess a special and distinguishing excellence, this one animal is responsible for greatest and highest points of excellence. A lion excels in courage, an ox in reliability and adaptability to agriculture, the horse in intelligence and speed, the ass and mule, as is stated by the poets, in patience and hard work; and other animals have other good points: this one animal combines the excellence of all others without one exception. He is naturally, suitable for war work and the pursuits of peace, and equally fitted to be of use and to be a pleasant companion. It would not be easy, as you will believe, to enumerate all the excellences and all the services to ourselves of this animal.

— Theodorus Gaza, Laudatio Canis, 1482

| Literature

A Folded Story

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

Christopher Nolan’s 2000 film Memento, about a man who has lost his memory, tells a coherent story in a disjointed order (click to enlarge). Scenes from the first half of the story, shot in black and white, are presented in chronological order. Scenes from the second half, shot in color, are presented in reverse chronology. The film alternates between these two timelines, beginning at the start/end and arriving at the middle — which acknowledges the advent of color with the development of a Polaroid photograph.

| Entertainment

Roman Surprise

What’s the largest number that can be expressed in Roman numerals? If no single letter can appear more than three times in a row, then the highest we can go is 3,999, or MMMCMXCIX.

These 3,999 values contain in total 30,000 characters, and, pleasingly, reader Ian Duff finds that 5,600 are Is, 2,000 are Vs, 6,000 are Xs, 2,000 are Ls, 6,000 are Cs, 2,000 are Ds, and 6,400 are Ms.

(Thanks, Ian.)

| Science & Math · Trivia