Good Boy

In 1990 François Caradec invented “poems for dogs.” A pet’s name is hidden phonetically in each verse; like a dog whistle, it goes unnoticed by the master but makes the dog sit up. Here’s a sample written for Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel Flush:

My mistress never slights me
When taking outdoor tea.
She brings sweet cake
For her sweet sake,
Rough, luscious bones for me.

Flush was already a bit of a literary celebrity — Barrett Browning composed two poems about him, and Virginia Woolf made him the hero of a whole novel, Flush: A Biography, in 1933. In 1843, after Flush was briefly held for ransom, his mistress wrote, “Oh, and if you had seen him, when he came home & threw himself into my arms … in that dumb inarticulate ecstasy which is so affecting.”

November 1, 2012October 31, 2012 | Language · Poems

Black and White

koltanowski chess problem

A curious puzzle by George Koltanowski, from America Salutes Comins Mansfield, 1983. “Who mates in 1?”

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White could mate in three different ways if it were his turn, but it can’t be, as there’s no legal move that Black can just have made. So Black plays Bxf6#.

November 1, 2012February 7, 2013 | Puzzles

Tribute

Japanese novelist Tarō Hirai wrote detective fiction under the pseudonym Edogawa Rampo.

That’s a phonetic rendering of one of the genre’s inventors — Edgar Allan Poe.

October 31, 2012October 31, 2012 | Language · Literature

Counter Play

A puzzle by Lewis Carroll:

A bag contains one counter, known to be either white or black. A white counter is put in, the bag shaken, and a counter drawn out, which proves to be white. What is now the chance of drawing a white counter?

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It seems at first that the chance must be 1/2, as we’ve simply added a white counter and then removed it again, returning the bag to its original state. But this is an error. After the white counter is added, the bag contains either (a) 2 white counters or (b) 1 white counter and 1 black counter. These states are equally probable. The chance of drawing a white counter from bag (a) is 1; from bag (b) it’s 1/2. So when the white counter is drawn, the chance that the bag had contained (a) 2 white counters or (b) 1 white counter and 1 black counter are proportional to (a) 1/2 × 1 (b) 1/2 × 1/2, i.e., 2 to 1. So there’s a 2/3 chance that the remaining counter is white. In other words, the white counter that we drew is twice as likely to have come from a white-white bag than from a white-black bag.

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October 31, 2012February 7, 2013 | Puzzles

Coming and Going

This is U.S. patent number 112, “saddle for removing the sick and for other purposes,” issued in 1837 to the magnificently named Hezekiah Thistle of New Orleans.

The patient (or body) lies on a bed mounted on springs above the wooden saddle. “There is also a strap G attached to the side of the bed near the center which passes around the thigh and is buckled to the outside of the bed in an oblique direction to prevent the wounded man from slipping down.”

Even the horse looks grim.

October 31, 2012October 30, 2012 | Technology

Cura Te Ipsum

“Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.” — Jeremy Bentham

October 30, 2012October 30, 2012 | Society

Amity

Letter to the Times, March 23, 1973:

Sir,

I would be most grateful if I could pass on the following to you and your readers before the bloom goes from it.

I have just stepped out of a cab in which I travelled through London with a starry-eyed taxi driver. I had hardly got into the cab when he looked at me and said: ‘D’you mind guvnor if I tell you something? I have just been at the airport at Heathrow and there, suddenly, this Frenchman comes up to me carrying a magnificent bunch of flowers in his hand. Gosh, you should have seen it guvnor, and he hands it to me and says, “Taxi, if I pay you double fare, will you take these flowers and give them to your Queen?” And I looks at him as if he was mad and he says to me: “Now look taxi, I am serious; are you on or are you not?” And what do you think I did?’

‘What did you do?’ I asked him.

‘Cor, I couldn’t let ‘im and ‘er down, so I just come from the bleeding Palace.’

Yours truly,

Laurens van der Post

October 30, 2012October 29, 2012 | Society

The Perfect Crime

Suspect A has shot a man through the heart during the last half minute. But Suspect B shot him through the heart during the preceding 1/4 minute, Suspect C shot him through the heart during the 1/8 minute before that, and so on. Assuming that a bullet through the heart kills a man instantly, the victim must already have been dead before any given suspect shot him.

Indeed, notes José Benardete, he cannot be said to have died of a bullet wound.

October 30, 2012October 29, 2012 | Science & Math

A New Outlook

A correspondent of the Manchester Sporting Chronicle, thinking that his horse was short-sighted, had his eyes examined by an oculist, who certified that the horse had a No. 7 eye and required concave glasses. These were obtained and fitted on to the horse’s head. At first the horse was a little surprised, but rapidly showed signs of the keenest pleasure, and he now stands all the morning looking over the half-door of his stable with his spectacles on, gazing around him with an air of sedate enjoyment. When driven his manner is altogether changed from his former timidity; but if pastured without his spectacles on, he hangs about the gate whinnying in a plaintive minor key. If the spectacles are replaced he kicks up his heels and scampers up and down the pasture with delight.

— British Veterinary Journal, March 1888

October 29, 2012August 27, 2016 | Oddities

Spear Fight

A puzzle by Henry Dudeney:

A lady is accustomed to buy from her greengrocer large bundles of asparagus, each twelve inches in circumference. The other day the man had no large bundles in stock, but handed her instead two small ones, each six inches in circumference. “That is the same thing,” she said, “and, of course, the price will be the same.” But the man insisted that the two bundles together contained more than the large one, and charged a few pence extra. Which was correct — the lady or the greengrocer?

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Both were wrong, and the lady was badly cheated. She only got half the quantity that would be contained in the large bundle, and therefore should have been charged half the original price. A circle with the circumference half that of another must have its area a quarter that of the other. (Henry E. Dudeney, “The Paradox Party,” Strand 38:228 [January 1910], 626-632.)

October 29, 2012May 2, 2020 | Puzzles

An idler's miscellany of compendious amusements

Author: Greg Ross