Two Quizzes

King William’s College, on the Isle of Man, has posted the 2018 edition of its General Knowledge Paper, “The World’s Most Difficult Quiz.”

“The King William’s College General Knowledge Paper (GKP) has been frustrating and intriguing a select group of quiz connoisseurs since 1904. The paper consists of 18 sets of 10 questions, each set covering a particular theme, which in many cases is far from obvious. Cracking the theme has long been one of the attractions to devotees of the GKP.”

Answers will be published on the school website at the end of January. A warning: “A Latin phrase is always printed at the top of the quiz: Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est. Freely translated, this means ‘The greatest part of knowledge is knowing where to find something’. However, be warned — using Google or a similar search engine may not always deliver the expected results!”

At the same time, the Royal Statistical Society has released its annual Christmas Quiz.

“For the last quarter-century, the Royal Statistical Society has published a fiendishly difficult Christmas quiz to entertain puzzle fans over the festive break – and this year’s special 25th anniversary edition, devised by Dr Tim Paulden, is sure to get the cogs spinning after a glass or two of mulled wine. Cracking the 15 problems below will require a potent mix of general knowledge, logic, and lateral thinking – but, as usual, no specialist mathematical knowledge is needed.” The entrant or team that scores the most points wins a subscription to the society’s magazine, Significance.

(Via MetaFilter.)

December 21, 2018 | Puzzles

Oh

These three riddles have the same answer. What is it?

He who with his hands puts it together will not be poor, and he who buys it, does not wish to use it, and he who uses it, does not know it: now you guess what it is.

— Johannes Secundus (1511-1536)

There was a man bespake a thing
Which when the owner home did bring,
He that made it did refuse it:
And he that brought it would not use it,
And he that hath it doth not know
Whether he hath it yea or no.

— Sir John Davies (1569-1626)

There was a man who bought a thing,
The thing he bought, he did not want,
The man who sold it, could not use it,
The man who used it, did not know it.

— Every Other Saturday: A Journal of Select Reading, New and Old, April 26, 1884

	Select Click for Answer
A coffin.

December 21, 2018December 20, 2018 | Puzzles

A Surprise Guest

December 20, 2018 | Oddities

Unquote

“The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.” — William Shenstone, “On Writing and Books,” 1769

December 20, 2018December 19, 2018 | Quotations

Odd at Heart

A problem proposed by Charles W. Trigg in the Spring 1970 issue of the Pi Mu Epsilon Journal (Volume 5, Number 4):

The digits 1-9 can be arranged in a square array so that the digits in no column, row, or long diagonal appear in order of magnitude:

trigg pmej paritypuzzle

Prove that, however this is done, the central digit must be odd.

	Select Click for Answer
One row, one column, and two diagonals pass through the center. In order to honor the requirement, we must arrange the eight outer digits so that none of these four triplets falls in ascending or descending order; that is, in each of these four triplets the center digit must be either the highest or the lowest value. In order to accomplish this, we must complete each triplet by adding two digits that are either both lower than the central digit or both higher. But if the center digit is even, that leaves us with an odd number of digits whose value is lower than the center digit and an odd number whose value is higher. So we’ll be forced to complete at least one of the four triplets by combining one higher and one lower value — producing a trio that falls in order of magnitude.

Click for Answer

December 19, 2018December 19, 2018 | Puzzles

Sound and Sense

In 1929 linguist Edward Sapir made up two words, mal and mil, and told 500 subjects that one of them meant “large table” and the other “small table.” When asked to tell which was which, 80 percent responded that mal meant “large table” and mil meant “small table” — suggesting that different vowels evoke different sizes.

Four years later, Stanley Newman extended the experiment to include all the vowels. He placed them in a sequence that he said English speakers associate with increasing sizes: i (as in ill), e (met), ae (hat), a (ah), u (moon), o (hole), and so on.

Interestingly, this ranking also reflects the size of the mouth shape needed to pronounce each vowel. “In other words,” writes Peter Farb in Word Play, “the psychological awareness that speakers of English have about what the vowels convey matches the anatomical means of producing them.”

See The Bouba/Kiki Effect.

(Edward Sapir, “A Study in Phonetic Symbolism,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 12:3 [1929], 225; Stanley S. Newman, “Further Experiments in Phonetic Symbolism,” American Journal of Psychology 45:1 [1933], 53-75.)

December 19, 2018December 18, 2018 | Language

Black and White

From Francis Healey, A Collection of Two Hundred Chess Problems, 1866. White to mate in two moves.

	Select Click for Answer
White wins with the seemingly crazy 1. Qd4!: Black can’t prevent both 2. Rb6# and 2. Bf3#.

December 18, 2018 | Puzzles

Eric the Robot

In 1928, when London’s Society of Model Engineers received word that the Duke of York would be unable to open its annual exhibition, acting secretary W.H. Richards said, “Very well, I will find a substitute: it is a mechanical show, let us have a mechanical man to open it.”

So they did. Attendees that September were greeted by a robot named Eric who could stand up, bow, look left and right, deliver a four-minute opening address “with appropriate gestures,” and sit down. The speech, imparted by a radio signal, was described as “really sparkling” — apparently literally, as blue sparks shot from Eric’s teeth. From the Model Engineer and Light Machinery Review:

The Exhibition of 1928 has been one of the most successful we ever had. … The ‘Robot’ was a continuous attraction; he drew thousands of people to see his remarkable performance. … It is estimated that he rose and bowed to his audiences more than a thousand times during the week, and he not only amused the majority of his visitors, but positively amazed and bewildered them with his clever movements and conversation.

In 1929 Eric toured America, where he visited Harvard and MIT and informed interviewers that he did not gamble, drink, or run around at night. That’s reassuring, because eventually he disappeared — London Science Museum curator Ben Russell told the Telegraph, “No one quite knows what happened to him, whether he was blown up or taken to pieces for spare parts.” So, working from old photographs, the museum rebuilt him, and he appeared, debonair as ever, in a 2017 exhibition:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eric_the_Robot_(32822317725).jpg — Image: Wikimedia Commons

December 18, 2018December 17, 2018 | Technology

Podcast Episode 229: The Stone of Destiny

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mal-b/8787372608 — Image: Flickr

In 1950, four patriotic Scots broke in to Westminster Abbey to steal the Stone of Scone, a symbol of Scottish independence that had lain there for 600 years. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow the memorable events of that evening and their meaning for the participants, their nation, and the United Kingdom.

We’ll also evade a death ray and puzzle over Santa’s correspondence.

See full show notes …

December 17, 2018January 8, 2019 | History · Podcast

Saved at Last

Early Christian theologians had to contend with an awkward question: On Resurrection Day, what happens to people who have been devoured by birds, beasts, and fish? If the substance of my body has been assimilated by another creature, how can I reclaim it in eternity?

The answer came from Athenagoras in the second century. He declared that human flesh was “non-natural” and could not be absorbed by other creatures:

What is against nature can never pass into nourishment for the limbs and parts requiring it, and what does not pass into nourishment can never become united with that which it is not adapted to nourish. Then can human bodies never combine with bodies like themselves, to which this nourishment would be against nature, even though it were to pass many times through their stomach, owing to some most bitter accident.

Jonah, after all, had not been digested by the great fish that had swallowed him. So there was hope for those who had been devoured: They would be vomited or excreted, and God could then reassemble what he had once made.

This resolved the question, but it made for an unpleasant motif in Christian iconography in which beasts, birds, and fish vomit up feet, hands, limbs, and heads — the latter bearing happy faces.

(D. Endsjø, Greek Resurrection Beliefs and the Success of Christianity, 2009.)

December 16, 2018 | Religion