“Shun the inquisitive person, for he is also a talker.” — Horace
Author: Greg Ross
An Urgent Question
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amZGPxmGxxQ
Based on a James Blish short story, The Beast Must Die (1974) is a curious twist on the Clue genre: A millionaire invites a group of people to a remote island and reveals that one of them is a werewolf, and they must work out who it is.
The movie includes a 30-second “werewolf break” near the end, in which the audience are asked to guess the werewolf’s identity based on the clues.
Counterpoint
In 1924 British journalist William Norman Ewer published an antisemitic couplet:
How odd of God
To choose the Jews.
It’s been met with at least six responses. From Leo Rosten:
Not odd of God.
Goyim annoy ‘im.
From Cecil Brown:
But not so odd
As those who choose
A Jewish God
Yet spurn the Jews.
Three anonymous replies:
Not odd of God
His son was one.
Not odd, you sod
The Jews chose God.
How strange of man
To change the plan.
And Yale political scientist Jim Sleeper wrote:
Moses, Jesus, Marx, Einstein, and Freud;
No wonder the goyim are annoyed.
Who’s There?
In some parts of Amsterdam, residents mount mirrors on the sides of parlor windows in order to monitor neighborly activities. This window bears two, one directed sideward and the other down. They’re called spionnetjes, or “little spies.”
“Little spies are relics of an earlier period when they enabled residents to preview visitors, but they are now used to see what is going on up and down the block,” writes John L. Locke in Eavesdropping: An Intimate History (2010). “At one time, similar mirrors were used in America, including Society Hill in Philadelphia.”
Misc
- The brighter stars of open cluster NGC 2169 form a giant 37.
- Three ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Unique.
- Noam Chomsky was bar mitzvahed on Pearl Harbor Day.
- 67234 = 6 + 72+3 × 4
- “You never know when you’re making a memory.” — Rickie Lee Jones
(Thanks, Charlie and Sean.)
Black and White
A “grid-chess” problem by E. Visserman, from Fairy Chess Review, 1954. A grid divides the board into 16 large squares, and each move by each side must cross at least one line of the grid. For example, in this position it would be illegal for the black king to move to f3. How can White mate in two moves?
Podcast Episode 275: A Kidnapped Painting
In 1961, Goya’s famous portrait of the Duke of Wellington went missing from London’s National Gallery. The case went unsolved for four years before someone unexpectedly came forward to confess to the heist. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll describe one of the greatest art thefts in British history and the surprising twists that followed.
We’ll also discover Seward’s real folly and puzzle over a man’s motherhood.
One of a Kind
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The Yemeni island Socotra, off the tip of the Horn of Africa in the Arabian Sea, is so isolated that nearly 700 of its species are found nowhere else on Earth. The island’s bitter aloe has valuable pharmaceutical and medicinal properties, and the red sap of Dracaena cinnabari, above, was once thought to be the blood of dragons.
And this is only what remains after two millennia of human settlement; the island once featured wetlands and pastures that were home to crocodiles and water buffaloes. Tanzanian zoologist Jonathan Kingdon says, “The animals and plants that remain represent a degraded fraction of what once existed.”
Line Work
A problem proposed by C. Gebhardt in the Fall 1966 issue of Pi Mu Epsilon Journal:
A particular set of dominoes has 21 tiles: (1, 1), (1, 2), … (1, 6), (2, 2), … (6,6). Is it possible to lay all 21 tiles in a line so that each adjacent pair of tile ends matches (that is, each 1 abuts a 1, and so on)?
Books
Just a reminder — Futility Closet books make great gifts for people who are impossible to buy gifts for. Both contain hundreds of hand-picked favorites from our archive of curiosities. Some reviews:
“A wild, wonderful, and educational romp through history, science, zany patents, math puzzles, wonderful words (like boanthropy, hallelujatic, and andabatarian), the Devil’s Game, self-contradicting words, and so much more. Buy this book and feed your mind!” — Clifford A. Pickover, author of The Mathematics Devotional
“Futility Closet delivers concentrated doses of weird, wonderful, brain-stimulating ideas and anecdotes, curated mainly from forgotten old books. I’m hooked — there’s nothing quite like it!” — Mark Frauenfelder, founder, Boing Boing
“Meant to be read in pieces, but impossible to put down.” — Gary Antonick, editor, New York Times Numberplay blog
“Futility Closet is a dusty museum back room where one can spend minutes or hours among seldom-seen curiosities, and feel that none of the time was wasted.” — Alan Bellows, DamnInteresting.com
Both books are available now on Amazon. Thanks for your support!