Double Duty

On Nov. 5, 1996, Election Day in the United States, the New York Times crossword puzzle carried a surprising clue:

39. Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper (!), with 43A

43 across turned out to be ELECTED, but 39 across might be either CLINTON or BOBDOLE — both possibilities had seven letters. Was the Times venturing to guess the outcome of the day’s election?

No. Composer Jeremiah Farrell had contrived each of the seven down clues to admit of two possible answers, so that no matter which candidate won, the newspaper might claim a “correct” result.

Crossword editor Will Shortz called Farrell’s ambiguous effort his favorite puzzle of all time.

(Thanks, Andrew.)

| Puzzles

A Reindeer Cyclone

Russian photographer Lev Fedoseyev captured this drone footage on March 24 on the Kola Peninsula in the Arctic Circle.

When threatened, a herd of reindeer runs in a circle, making it hard for a predator to target any individual. The fawns are at the center.

| Science & Math

First Contact

Moving beyond attempts at merely contacting the dead, artist Attila von Szalay claimed to be the first researcher to actually record the discarnate voices of the spirit world. Von Szalay’s quest began in 1936, while he worked in his darkroom. He claimed to hear in this darkened chamber the voice of his deceased brother calling his name. A subsequent interest in Yoga, meditation, and Eastern philosophy made him better able to hear such voices, and in 1941 he attempted for the first time to record the spirits on a 78 rpm record (with disappointing results). It wasn’t until 1956 that von Szalay ‘successfully’ recorded such phenomena, this time using a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Perhaps unaware of their importance in the history of telecommunications, the first recorded spirit voices offered such banal messages as ‘This is G!,’ ‘Hot dog, Art!,’ and ‘Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.’ These pioneering sessions were reported by noted psychic researcher Raymond Baylass in a letter to the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research in 1959.

— Jeffrey Sconce, Haunted Media: Electronic Presence From Telegraphy to Television, 2000

| Death · Oddities · Technology

False Memory

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orologio_strage_bologna.jpeg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

On Aug. 2, 1980, a bomb exploded in the main railway station in Bologna, killing 85 people and wounding 200. The blast broke a large clock on the outside wall of the building. It was repaired and continued to run for 16 years, but the image of the clock with its hands fixed at 10:25 became a symbol of the event, and when it stopped working in 1996 its hands were set permanently to that time to commemorate the tragedy.

In 2009 psychologist Stefania de Vito and her colleagues surveyed 180 people who worked at the station or used the trains regularly. Of 173 who knew that the clock is now stopped, 92 percent said that it had always been broken. 79 percent, including all 21 railway employees surveyed, claimed to have seen it set always to 10:25. Of 56 citizens who regularly took part in the official annual commemoration, only 6 remembered correctly that the clock had been working in the past.

“These data indicate that individual memory distortions shared by a large group of people develop into collective false memories,” de Vito writes. In this case, the clock’s symbolic importance “acted as suggestive information and obscured the real experience of seeing the clock working, either as a misleading cue at retrieval or as catalysis for a semantic representation drawn from weak encoding.”

(Stefania de Vito, Roberto Cubelli, and Sergio Della Sala, “Collective Representations Elicit Widespread Individual False Memories,” Cortex 45:5 [2009], 686-687.)

| Science & Math

Podcast Episode 338: A Point of Law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hammersmith_Ghost.PNG

One dark night in 1804, a London excise officer mistook a bricklayer for a ghost and shot him. This raised a difficult question: Was he guilty of murder? In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll consider the case of the Hammersmith ghost, which has been called “one of the greatest curiosities in English criminal law.”

We’ll also worry about British spiders and puzzle over some duplicative dog names.

See full show notes …

| Crime · History · Podcast

Horse Sense

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Krall_Zarif_Muhamed.jpg

That the world-famous ‘thinking horses’ of Elberfeld are not fakes, that they extract cube roots, read and spell by rational processes rather than by means of trick signs from their trainer, is the conclusion reached by one of the leading European authorities on animal psychology …

The cube root of 5832 was proposed by one of the ladies present, written on the board for the horse and the answer, 18, given correctly in a few seconds. \sqrt{15376} and \sqrt[4]{456976} were likewise given correctly — 124 and 26 in about ten seconds. Mr. Krall and the attendant groom had left the hall immediately after the exercise was written on the board in each case. …

[ \sqrt[4]{614656} ]. Correct reply in a few seconds: 28. The horse was then alone in the room. All the spectators had also gone outside.

[ \sqrt[4]{4879681} ]. Reply after 30 seconds: 117. Wrong. The horse corrected it himself to 144, but finally gave up rather despairingly.

— “Can Horses Think? Learned Commission Says ‘Perhaps,'” New York Times, Aug. 31, 1913

| Oddities

The Ghost Train

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Newhaven_Marine_Station_-_January_2014..JPG
Image: Wikimedia Commons

In August 2006, the Newhaven Marine railway station in East Sussex was closed to passengers due to safety concerns. But it remained legally open, and under an 1844 regulation a train was required to call there once a day.

So until its closure in 2020, the station received daily train service, though its platforms were inaccessible to the public. The service was listed in timetables, but passengers who wished to travel to the next station were ferried there by taxi instead.

| Oddities

Surrounded


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The territory of Madha is an exclave — it belongs to Oman, but it’s surrounded by the United Arab Emirates.

And Madha itself contains an enclave — the village of Nahwa belongs to the United Arab Emirates.

This makes Nahwa a second-order enclave — it lies within the boundaries of its nation, but it’s surrounded by the territory of another state.

| Oddities

Easter Fare

Wolfram Alpha offers some surprising seasonal equations — a bunny:

max(min(-51/25 abs(-(21 x)/(22 a) – (5 y)/(17 a) + 2/11)^(29/16) – 37/17 abs((5 x)/(17 a) – (21 y)/(22 a) + 15/17)^(35/23) + 1, -75/22 abs(-(12 x)/(17 a) – (12 y)/(17 a) + 19/24)^(34/15) – 105/13 abs(-(12 x)/(17 a) + (12 y)/(17 a) + 1/34)^(123/62) + 1, x/a), min(-51/25 abs((21 x)/(22 a) – (5 y)/(17 a) + 2/11)^(29/16) – 37/17 abs(-(5 x)/(17 a) – (21 y)/(22 a) + 15/17)^(35/23) + 1, -75/22 abs((12 x)/(17 a) – (12 y)/(17 a) + 19/24)^(34/15) – 105/13 abs((12 x)/(17 a) + (12 y)/(17 a) + 1/34)^(123/62) + 1, -x/a), min(max(-(177 x^2)/(13 a^2) – 46/15 (y/a + 1/24)^2 + 1, (690 x^2)/(29 a^2) + 63/4 (y/a + 8/17)^2 – 1), 1/10 – ((79 x^2)/(16 a^2) + 16 (y/a + 1/2)^2 – 1) ((16 x^2)/a^2 + (79 y^2)/(16 a^2) – 1), 6287/17 (x/a – 1/9)^2 + 100 (y/a + 1/16)^2 – 1, 6287/17 (x/a + 1/9)^2 + 100 (y/a + 1/16)^2 – 1), -31550/23 (x/a – 2/19)^2 – 62500/49 (y/a + 1/11)^2 + 1, -31550/23 (x/a + 2/19)^2 – 62500/49 (y/a + 1/11)^2 + 1, -18407811/17 (x/a – 1/25)^4 – 250127/15 (y/a + 13/22)^4 + 1, -18407811/17 (x/a + 1/25)^4 – 250127/15 (y/a + 13/22)^4 + 1, -(x/a – 1/2)^2 – (y/a + 5/4)^2 + 1/30, 11/20 – ((y^4/(63 a^4) – y^3/(11 a^3) – y^2/(7 a^2) + (13 y)/(15 a) + x^2/a^2 + 29/43) ((142 x^2)/(15 a^2) + ((-(304 y)/(23 a) – 878/31) x)/a + (1019 y)/(25 a) + (184 y^2)/(13 a^2) + 349/11) ((142 x^2)/(15 a^2) + (((304 y)/(23 a) + 878/31) x)/a + (1019 y)/(25 a) + (184 y^2)/(13 a^2) + 349/11))/(11/19 – y/(8 a))^2, -x^2/a^2 – x/a – (5 y)/(2 a) – y^2/a^2 – 16/9, -(127 x^2)/(21 a^2) – ((-(118 y)/(23 a) – 47/7) x)/a – (559 y)/(15 a) – (173 y^2)/(22 a^2) – 847/19, -(127 x^2)/(21 a^2) – (((118 y)/(23 a) + 47/7) x)/a – (559 y)/(15 a) – (173 y^2)/(22 a^2) – 847/19)>=0

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=bunny+equation

… and an egg:

min(1/5 – sin(16 p sqrt(x^2/(a^2 (1 – y/(10 a))^2) + (9 y^2)/(16 a^2)) (1 – 1/10 (1 – sqrt(x^2/(a^2 (1 – y/(10 a))^2) + (9 y^2)/(16 a^2))) cos(12 tan^(-1)(x/(a (1 – y/(10 a))), (3 y)/(4 a))))), -x^2/(a^2 (1 – y/(10 a))^2) – (9 y^2)/(16 a^2) + 1)>=0

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=first+Easter+egg

In Poland, Easter Monday is Śmigus-dyngus, in which boys throw water over girls they like and spank them with pussy willow branches. Traditionally, Wikipedia says, “Boys would sneak into girls’ homes at daybreak on Easter Monday and throw containers of water over them while they were still in bed. After all the water had been thrown, the screaming girls would often be dragged to a nearby river or pond for another drenching. Sometimes a girl would be carried out, still in her bed, before both bed and girl were thrown into the water together. Particularly attractive girls could expect to be soaked repeatedly during the day.”

(Thanks, Danesh and Wade.)

| Science & Math · Society