Fruitful Dreams

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In 1862, August Kekulé dreamed of a snake seizing its own tail; the vision inspired him to propose the structure of the benzene molecule.

Louis Agassiz had been struggling for two weeks to decipher the impression of a fossil fish in a stone slab when he dreamed on three successive nights of its proper character. When he chiseled away the stone he found that the hidden portions of the fish matched his nocturnal drawing.

William Watts had been forming lead shot mechanically when he dreamed he was caught in a cloudburst of molten metal. The image inspired him to develop the shot tower.

The best such story, alas, is false. It’s said that Elias Howe, frustrated in devising a sewing machine, dreamed he had been captured by an African tribe. He noticed that the menacing warriors’ spear-tips bore holes, and this inspired him to move the hole in his machine’s needle from the dull end (as in a hand needle) to the sharp one.

“This is not true,” writes Alonzo Bemis. “Mr. Howe was too much of a Yankee to place any dependence in dreams, and the needle idea was worked out by careful thought and countless experiments.”

| Science & Math · Technology

Ship of State

There is a story to the effect that a statistician once found a very high correlation between the number of old maids and the size of the clover crop in different English counties. After puzzling over this relation for some time, he was able to trace what appeared to him to be the causal chain. Old maids, it appeared, kept cats; and cats ate mice. Field mice, however, were natural enemies of bumblebees, and these latter were, in turn, the chief agents in fertilizing the flowers of the clover plants. The implication, of course, is that the British Parliament should never legislate on the subject of marriage bonuses without first evaluating the effect upon the clover crop of reducing the spinster population.

— Herbert Simon, Administrative Behavior, 1997

| Society

Multitudes

USHERS contains five pronouns: HE, HER, HERS, SHE, US.

If rearranging letters is permitted, then SMITHERY contains 17: HE, HER, HERS, HIM, HIS, I, IT, ITS, ME, MY, SHE, THEIR, THEIRS, THEM, THEY, THY, YE.

| Language

Lincoln Seeks Equality

lincoln seeks equality puzzle

You’re in a pitch-dark room. On a table before you are 12 pennies. You know that 5 are heads up and 7 are tails up, but you don’t know which are which. By moving and flipping the coins you must produce two piles with an equal number of heads in each pile. How can you do this without seeing the coins?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

No Argument There

‘Well, farmer, you told us your wood was good place for hunting. Now we’ve tramped through it for three hours and found no game.’ ‘Just so! Well, I suppose, as a general thing, the less game there is the more hunting you have.’

— Tit-Bits From All the Most Interesting Books, Periodicals and Newspapers in the World, March 25, 1882

| Humor

In Memoriam

While Bret Harte was serving as proofreader for a provincial newspaper in Yreka, Calif., he was asked to consider a flowery obituary that contained the sentence “Even in Yreka her chastity was conspicuous.”

Harte realized with a smile that the writer had probably meant “charity,” so he underscored “chastity” and put a question mark in parentheses in the margin, to indicate that the word should be checked.

The following morning he picked up the paper and read: “Even in Yreka her chastity was conspicuous (?)”

| Literature

Good News!

Cities will be provided with moving street-ways, always in action at two or more speeds; and we shall have learned to hop on and off the lowest speed from the stationary pavement, and from the lower speeds to the higher, without danger. When streets cross, one rolling roadway will rise in a curve over the other. There will be no vehicular traffic at all in cities of any size; all the transportation will be done by the roads’ own motion.

— T. Baron Russell, A Hundred Years Hence, 1906

| Technology

Non/Fiction

Alfred Tarski imagines a 100-page book in which page 1 reads, “The statement on page 2 of this book is true.” Page 2 reads, “The statement on page 3 of this book is true.” This continues until page 100, which reads, “The statement on page 1 of this book is false.” Is the statement on page 67 true or false?

In writing the preface for a new book, an author commonly thanks those who helped him and concludes, “I am responsible for the inevitable errors that remain.” David Makinson notes that the author now seems to believe, simultaneously and rationally, that each given statement in the book is accurate and that at least one of them isn’t.

(William Poundstone notes that the author might try to escape this problem by writing instead, “At least one of the statements in this book is false.” Now if the text itself is clean, the disclaimer cancels itself … or does it?)

Kurt Vonnegut’s 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle is prefaced with the statement “Nothing in this book is true.” Is this statement true?

| Science & Math

Straight and Narrow

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Draw three nonintersecting circles of different sizes, and bracket each pair of them with tangents. Each pair of tangents will intersect in a point, and these three points will always lie along a line.

On being shown this theorem, Cornell engineering professor John Edson Sweet paused and said, “Yes, that is perfectly self-evident.” What intuitive proof had he seen?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles · Science & Math

Road Games

Lord John Russell told us a good trick of Sheridan’s upon Richardson. Sheridan had been driving out three or four hours in a hackney coach, when, seeing Richardson pass, he hailed him and made him get in. He instantly contrived to introduce a topic upon which Richardson (who was the very soul of disputatiousness) always differed with him; and at last, affecting to be mortified at Richardson’s arguments, said, ‘You really are too bad, I cannot bear to listen to such things; I will not stay in the same coach with you.’ And accordingly got down and left him, Richardson hallooing out triumphantly, ‘Ah, you’re beat, you’re beat!’ Nor was it till the heat of his victory had a little cooled, that he found out he was left in the lurch to pay for Sheridan’s three hours’ coaching.

— Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, 1853

| Literature · Society