Tableau

A pleasing little detail: In Arthur C. Clarke’s 1946 story “Rescue Party,” a federation of aliens visit Earth immediately before the sun explodes, hoping to rescue its inhabitants. To their surprise, they don’t find us (it turns out we’ve fled the planet), and they comb our deserted civilization.

The explorers were particularly puzzled by one room — clearly an office of some kind — that appeared to have been completely wrecked. The floor was littered with papers, the furniture had been smashed, and smoke was pouring through the broken windows from the fires outside.

T’sinadree was rather alarmed.

‘Surely no dangerous animal could have got into a place like this!’ he exclaimed, fingering his paralyzer nervously.

Alarkane did not answer. He began to make that annoying sound which his race called ‘laughter.’ It was several minutes before he would explain what had amused him.

‘I don’t think any animal has done it,’ he said. ‘In fact, the explanation is very simple. Suppose you had been working all your life in this room, dealing with endless papers, year after year. And suddenly, you are told that you will never see it again, that your work is finished, and that you can leave it forever. More than that — no one will come after you. Everything is finished. How would you make your exit, T’sinadree?’

The other thought for a moment.

‘Well, I suppose I’d just tidy things up and leave. That’s what seems to have happened in all the other rooms.’

Alarkane laughed again.

‘I’m quite sure you would. But some individuals have a different psychology. I think I should have liked the creature that used this room.’

No explanation is given. “His two colleagues puzzled over his words for quite a while before they gave it up.”

| Literature · Society

Operation Cornflakes

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Operation-Cornflakes-3values.jpg

To disrupt German morale during World War II, the Allies hatched a plan to send anti-Nazi propaganda to German citizens through the mail. They quizzed prisoners of war about the German postal service and drew on local telephone directories to identify 2 million addressees who might receive forged letters and subversive material. Then the letters were loaded into counterfeit mailbags and dropped near destroyed trains in the hope that they’d be collected and delivered.

By 1945 twenty missions had been completed, but by then many German homes had been destroyed and their inhabitants killed or displaced, so the operation had limited effect. Above is a striking stamp prepared for the effort — the subscript on the “death head” stamp reads “Futsches Reich” (ruined empire) rather than “Deutsches Reich” (German Empire). Altogether 96,000 stamps were prepared for the effort, but the “death head” stamp may never have been used.

| History

The Heist

A puzzle by Jared Z., Nicole H., and Benjamin E., mathematicians at the National Security Agency:

The chief detective hurried down to the police station after hearing big news: there was a heist at Pi National Bank! The police had brought in seven known gang members seen leaving the scene of the crime. They belonged to the nefarious True/False Gang, so named because each member is either required to always tell the truth or required to always lie, although everyone is capable of engaging in wrongdoing. The chief also knew from his past cases that any crime committed by the gang always included one truth teller.

When the chief showed up, he asked the gang members the following questions:

1) Are you guilty?
2) How many of the seven of you are guilty?
3) How many of the seven of you tell the truth?

Here were their responses:

Person 1: Yes; 1; 1
Person 2: Yes; 3; 3
Person 3: No; 2; 2
Person 4: No; 4; 1
Person 5: No; 3; 3
Person 6: No; 3; 3
Person 7: Yes; 2; 2

After looking these answers over, the chief prepared to arrest those responsible.

Which of these seven did the chief arrest?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

In a Word

condisciple
n. a fellow student

precariat
n. people whose living standards are insecure

scripturiency
n. passion for writing

refocillation
n. imparting of new vigor

This brass plate is displayed at the corner of Drummond Street and South Bridge, near Rutherford’s Bar, in Edinburgh:

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1517098
Image: kim traynor

(Thanks, Nick.)

| Language · Literature

Yajilin

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yajilin_puzzle_(vector).png
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The goal of this logic puzzle is simple: to draw an orthogonally connected, non-intersecting loop that passes through every white square on the board. The trouble is that the board contains some number of black squares, and these are hidden. The only clues to their location are the numbers in the gray squares. In the diagram above, there are exactly 3 black squares in the third file north of the “3” indicator. And there are no black squares on the third rank anywhere east of the “0” indicator.

Gray squares can’t be black, no two black squares are orthogonally adjacent, and there may be some black squares that aren’t referred to by any of the indicators.

Knowing all this (and knowing that a solution is possible), can you determine the location of all the black squares and draw a loop that passes through all the white ones?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Misc

  • Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu are roughly antipodal.
  • WONDER is UNDERWAY in Pig Latin.
  • By convention, current flows from positive to negative in a circuit; electrons, which are negatively charged, move in the opposite direction.
  • The immaculate conception describes the birth of Mary, not Jesus.
  • “A man’s style in any art should be like his dress — it should attract as little attention as possible.” — Samuel Butler

10/22/2024 UPDATE: Interesting addendum from reader Mark Thompson: The capital cities Asunción, Canberra, and Kuwait City are nearly equidistant on great-circle routes:

Kuwait City to Canberra: 12,768 km
Canberra to Asunción: 12,712 km
Asunción to Kuwait City: 12,766 km

“Their mutual distances apart (along the earth’s surface) happen to be very close to one Earth-diameter [12,742 km]: so, sadly, they don’t all lie on a single great circle (since pi is not 3).” (Thanks, Mark.)

| Language · Quotations · Religion · Science & Math · Trivia

Degrees of Variance

In a 2008 essay, computer scientist Paul Graham offered a hierarchy of verbal disagreement:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement-en.svg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

“The most obvious advantage of classifying the forms of disagreement is that it will help people to evaluate what they read,” he wrote. “But the greatest benefit of disagreeing well is not just that it will make conversations better, but that it will make the people who have them happier. … If you study conversations, you find there is a lot more meanness down in [Name-Calling] than up in [Refuting the Central Point]. You don’t have to be mean when you have a real point to make.”

| Society

An Enigmatic Letter

In 1614, William Nealson, a trader in Japan for the British East India Company, wrote to his friend Richard Wickham. The first half of the letter is sensible enough, and Nealson notes that his associate Mr. Cocks has already written to Wickham, “wherein he hath informed you of all business, so as for me to write thereof should be but a tedious iteration.” But then he writes “Now to the purpose” and seems to go mad:

Concerning our domestic affairs, we live well and contentedly, and believe me, if you were here, I could think we were and should be a happy company, without strife or brawling. Of late I caught a great cold for want of bedstaves, but I have taken order for falling into the like inconveniences. For first, to recover my former health, I forgot not, fasting, a pot of blue burning ale with a fiery flaming toast and after (for recreation’s sake) provided a long staff with a pike in the end of it to jump over joined stools with. Hem.

Notwithstanding I may sing honononera, for my trade is quite decayed. Before I had sale for my nails faster than I could make them, but now they lie on my hand. For my shoes none will sell, because long lying abed in the morning saves shoe leather, and driving of great nails puts my small nails quite out of request, yea, even with my best customer; so that where every day he had wont to buy his dozen nails in the morning, I can scarcely get his custom once in two or three. Well this world will mend one day, but beware the grey mare eat not the grinding stone. I have had two satirical letters about this matter from Mr. Peacock, which pleased him as little as me, but I think he is so paid home at his own weapon as he will take better heed how he carp without cause. It was not more to me, but broader to Mr. Cocks. I know the parties which I speak of you would gladly know; for your satisfaction herein I cannot make you know mine, because I think you never see her; but I think God made her a woman and I a W. For the other, it is such a one as hardly or no I know you would not dream of. But yet for exposition of this riddle, construe this: all is not cuckolds that wear horns. Read this reversed, Ab dextro ad sinistro. O I G N I T A M. What, man! what is the matter? methinks you make crosses. For never muse on the matter; it is true. I am now grown poetical.

He that hath a high horse may get a great fall;
And he that hath a deaf boy, loud may he call;
And he that hath a fair wife, sore may he dread
That he get other folks’ brats to foster and to feed.

Is this code? Nealson closes by warning “Be not a blab of your tongue” and urges Wickham to destroy “whatever I write you of henceforward.” Are these inside jokes, or references to forgotten poems or songs? William Foster includes the letter without comment in his collection of correspondence received by the company. I haven’t been able to learn anything more about Nealson, or about this seeming oddity. I found it in Giles Milton’s Nathaniel’s Nutmeg (2012).

| Oddities