To Each His Own

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Modern_Toilet_Restaurant.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Taiwan’s Modern Toilet restaurant is so popular that it’s expanding into China and other parts of Asia. Patrons sit on acrylic toilets around glass-topped sinks to eat food from miniature toilet bowls and drink from plastic urinals. The desserts include “diarrhea with dried droppings” (chocolate), “bloody poop” (strawberry), and “green dysentery” (kiwi).

Owner Wang Zi-wei began by selling chocolate ice cream in paper toilets, inspired by a cartoon character. When the idea took off, he opened the full bathroom-themed restaurant in 2004, with shower heads and toilet plungers among the decor.

“It’s a little gross when you see other people eat,” one patron told Time in 2009. But, another added, “They do it tastefully.”

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cozinhandofantasias/12926164133
Image: Flickr
| Oddities

Open for Business

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elijah_Jefferson_Bond_Gravestone_Rear_Detail.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

When Elijah Bond, patentee of the Ouija board, died in 1921, he was buried in an unmarked grave, and as time passed its location was forgotten. In 1992, Robert Murch, chairman of the Talking Board Historical Society, set out to find it, and after a 15-year search he did — Bond had been buried with his wife’s family in Baltimore rather than with his own in Dorsey, Md.

Murch got permission to install a new headstone and raised the necessary funds through donations, and today Bond has the headstone above, with a simple inscription on the front and a Ouija board on the back — in case anyone wants to talk.

| Death · Entertainment

Growing Pains

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kegelstumpf.png

The Greek philosopher Democritus propounded this puzzle in the fourth century B.C.E.:

If a cone were cut by a plane parallel to the base, how must one conceive of the surfaces of the segments: as becoming equal or unequal? For being unequal, they make the cone irregular, taking many step-like indentations and roughnesses. But if they are equal, the segments will be equal and the cone will appear to have the property of the cylinder, being composed of equal, and not unequal, circles; which is most absurd.

If the cone’s cross section is increasing continuously, how can the two faces created by a cut fit together? It seems that one must be larger than the other, and yet at the same time it can’t be. How can we make sense of this?

| Science & Math

Guidance

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Soli-02.jpg

In the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist,” Arthur Conan Doyle created an inadvertent grammatical puzzle: Who does the term “solitary cyclist” refer to? Apart from the title, the phrase appears only twice in the story:

  1. “I will now lay before the reader the facts connected with Miss Violet Smith, the solitary cyclist of Charlington, and the curious sequel of our investigation, which culminated in unexpected tragedy.”
  2. “‘That’s the man!’ I [Watson] gasped. A solitary cyclist was coming towards us. His head was down …”

The first passage describes a woman and the second a man, Bob Carruthers. Which is the solitary cyclist of the title? For 69 years Holmes fans debated the question. Those who argued for Smith read “the solitary cyclist of Charlington” as an appositive phrase, another name for “Miss Violet Smith.” Certainly Carruthers was “a” solitary cyclist, but “the” solitary cyclist was Smith.

Those who argued for Carruthers thought that “the solitary cyclist of Charlington” above was not a description of Smith but the second item in a list — that is, Watson was promising to describe three things: the facts of the case, the cyclist, and the sequel. They allowed, though, that the comma after that phrase was unusual (I gather that the serial comma wasn’t commonly used then). In the story Carruthers pursues Smith, both on bicycles, so either interpretation seems reasonable.

The matter was resolved in 1972, when Andrew Peck tracked down the original manuscript in Cornell University’s rare book room. In the title and in the first passage above Doyle had originally written “man” and then crossed it out and substituted “cyclist.” So the solitary cyclist is definitely Bob Carruthers. Another mystery solved!

(Andrew J. Peck, “The Solitary Man-uscript,” Baker Street Journal, June 1972.)

| Language · Literature

A Way Through

Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto makes labyrinths out of salt. Working alone, he refines his initial sketches on computer and then builds them meticulously by hand, forming large, intricate mazes that fill entire rooms.

The final effect resembles the surface of the brain. Yamamoto lost his sister in 1994 to brain cancer, and he chose salt, a funeral material in Japan, “to heal my grief.” His first labyrinth had a single path from the exterior to the center; later works have offered multiple paths and often multiple entrances and exits.

After a work has been exhibited, he invites the public to help him destroy it and toss it back into the sea. “Drawing a labyrinth with salt is like following a trace of my memory,” he says. “Memories seem to change and vanish as time goes by; however, what I seek is to capture a frozen moment that cannot be attained through pictures or writings. What I look for at the end of the act of drawing could be a feeling of touching a precious memory.”

| Art

‘Tis the Season

Charles Trigg proposed this festive cryptarithm in the American Mathematical Monthly in 1956:

MERRY XMAS TO ALL

If each letter is a unique representation of a digit, and each word is a square integer, what are these four numbers?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Long Haul

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prescott_and_Arizona_Central_3.jpg

Recognize this locomotive? You’ve almost certainly seen it before: Built in 1891, “Sierra No. 3” was adopted by Hollywood in 1948 and became “the most photographed locomotive in the world,” appearing in The Red Glove, The Terror, The Virginian, The Texan, Young Tom Edison, Sierra Passage, Wyoming Mail, High Noon, The Cimarron Kid, Kansas Pacific, The Moonlighter, Apache, Rage at Dawn, The Return of Jack Slade, Texas Lady, The Big Land, Terror in a Texas Town, Man of the West, Face of a Fugitive, The Outrage, The Rare Breed, The Great Race, The Perils of Pauline, Finian’s Rainbow, A Man Called Gannon, The Great Bank Robbery, Joe Hill, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, Oklahoma Crude, Nickleodeon, Bound for Glory, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, The Long Riders, Pale Rider, Blood Red, Back to the Future Part III, Unforgiven, and Bad Girls.

Gary Cooper alone starred in four movies with it, including High Noon; Clint Eastwood, who appeared with it in Rawhide, Pale Rider, and Unforgiven, said it was “like a treasured old friend.” TV shows:

The Lone Ranger, Tales of Wells Fargo, Casey Jones, Rawhide, Overland Trail, Lassie, Death Valley Days, The Raiders, Petticoat Junction, The Wild Wild West, The Big Valley, The Legend of Jesse James, Scalplock, Iron Horse, Cimarron Strip, Dundee and the Culhane, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Ballad of the Iron Horse, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Great Man’s Whiskers, Inventing of America, Little House on the Prairie, Law of the Land, A Woman Called Moses, Lacy and the Mississippi Queen, Kate Bliss and the Ticker Tape Kid, The Night Rider, The Last Ride of the Dalton Gang, Belle Starr, East of Eden, Father Murphy, The A-Team, Bonanza: The Next Generation, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., and Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman.

William L. Withhuhn, former transportation history curator at the Smithsonian Institution, wrote, “Sierra Railway No. 3 has appeared in more motion pictures, documentaries, and television productions than any other locomotive. It is undisputedly the image of the archetypal steam locomotive that propelled the USA from the 19th century into the 20th.”

| Entertainment

Recoupling

From reader Dave Lawrence: What is notable about these 14 sets of words?

accost commit launch deeded
adhere heckle silent versed
ampere arrive angers theses
chance ascent tester stored
chaste ascend tinder seeded
cohere heckle silent versed
debase mucked refile stress
demure riffle silent versed
endure shelve riling nested
forego recess gossip needed
herein advice resins stones
rebate locket career tested
recast costar pirate esters
remade astute surest rested
Click for Answer
| Language

The Feynman Ciphers

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Richard-feynman.jpg

In 1987, Chris Cole posted a message to the sci.crypt Usenet group:

When I was a graduate student at Caltech, Professor Feynman showed me three samples of code that he had been challenged with by a fellow scientist at Los Alamos and which he had not been able to crack. I also was unable to crack them. I now post them for the net to give it a try.

The first, marked “Easier,” was this:

MEOTAIHSIBRTEWDGLGKNLANEA
INOEEPEYSTNPEUOOEHRONLTIR
OSDHEOTNPHGAAETOHSZOTTENT
KEPADLYPHEODOWCFORRRNLCUE
EEEOPGMRLHNNDFTOENEALKEHH
EATTHNMESCNSHIRAETDAHLHEM
TETRFSWEDOEOENEGFHETAEDGH
RLNNGOAAEOCMTURRSLTDIDORE
HNHEHNAYVTIERHEENECTRNVIO
UOEHOTRNWSAYIFSNSHOEMRTRR
EUAUUHOHOOHCDCHTEEISEVRLS
KLIHIIAPCHRHSIHPSNWTOIISI
SHHNWEMTIEYAFELNRENLEERYI
PHBEROTEVPHNTYATIERTIHEEA
WTWVHTASETHHSDNGEIEAYNHHH
NNHTW

Jack Morrison of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory had it solved the next day: “It’s a pretty standard transposition: split the text into 5-column pieces, then read from lower right upward.” This yields the opening of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:

WHANTHATAPRILLEWITHHISSHOURESSOOTET
HEDROGHTEOFMARCHHATHPERCEDTOTHEROOT
EANDBATHEDEVERYVEYNEINSWICHLICOUROF
WHICHVERTUENGENDREDISTHEFLOURWHANZE
PHIRUSEEKWITHHISSWEETEBREFTHINSPIRE
DHATHINEVERYHOLTANDHEETHTHETENDRECR
OPPESANDTHEYONGESONNEHATHINTHERAMHI
SHALVECOURSYRONNEANDSMALEFOWELESMAK
ENMELODYETHATSLEPENALTHENYGHTWITHOP
ENYESOPRIKETHHEMNATUREINHIRCORAGEST
HANNELONGENFOLKTOGOONONPILGRIM

But the other two ciphers have never been solved, despite 30 years of trying. Here they are:

#2 (“Harder”)

XUKEXWSLZJUAXUNKIGWFSOZRAWURORKXAOS
LHROBXBTKCMUWDVPTFBLMKEFVWMUXTVTWUI
DDJVZKBRMCWOIWYDXMLUFPVSHAGSVWUFWOR
CWUIDUJCNVTTBERTUNOJUZHVTWKORSVRZSV
VFSQXOCMUWPYTRLGBMCYPOJCLRIYTVFCCMU
WUFPOXCNMCIWMSKPXEDLYIQKDJWIWCJUMVR
CJUMVRKXWURKPSEEIWZVXULEIOETOOFWKBI
UXPXUGOWLFPWUSCH

#3 (“New Message”)

WURVFXGJYTHEIZXSQXOBGSVRUDOOJXATBKT
ARVIXPYTMYABMVUFXPXKUJVPLSDVTGNGOSI
GLWURPKFCVGELLRNNGLPYTFVTPXAJOSCWRO
DORWNWSICLFKEMOTGJYCRRAOJVNTODVMNSQ
IVICRBICRUDCSKXYPDMDROJUZICRVFWXIFP
XIVVIEPYTDOIAVRBOOXWRAKPSZXTZKVROSW
CRCFVEESOLWKTOBXAUXVB

Feynman, apparently, couldn’t break them either.

| Puzzles

Eh

Tenth-century merchant captain Bjarni Herjólfsson spent his summers trading in Scandinavia but returned to his native Iceland each winter to visit his parents. In 986 he was told that his father had sailed to Greenland with Erik the Red, so he followed them west. Lacking a map or a compass, he was blown off course by a storm, and when the weather cleared he sighted a wooded country with low hills. This couldn’t be Greenland, so he sailed north, and after two days he came upon a second land, level and wooded. Despite his crew’s protestations, Bjarni didn’t stop here either, but sailed north three days more, when he sighted a land of mountains and glaciers. This couldn’t be Greenland either, so he sailed away from it, and after four days by a lucky chance he landed at his father’s estate.

Today, writes University of Manitoba historian T.J. Oleson, “There are strong arguments for the view that the three lands seen by Bjarni were Newfoundland, Labrador, and Baffin Island” — he was probably the first European to sight the east coast of North America, but he’d been too incurious to investigate.

| History