Crazy Talk

Fleeing a rainstorm in 1710, Joseph Addison took shelter at an unfamiliar house. “As I sat in the porch, I heard the voices of two or three persons, who seemed very earnest in discourse. My curiosity was raised when I heard the names of Alexander the Great and Artaxerxes; and as their talk seemed to run on ancient heroes, I concluded there could not be any secret in it; for which reason I thought I might very fairly listen to what they said.”

After several parallels between great men, which appeared to me altogether groundless and chimerical, I was surprized to hear one say, that he valued the Black Prince more than the duke of Vendosme. How the duke of Vendosme should become a rival of the Black Prince’s, I could not conceive: and was more startled when I heard a second affirm with great vehemence, that if the emperor of Germany was not going off, he should like him better than either of them. He added, That though the season was so changeable, the duke of Marlborough was in blooming beauty. I was wondering to myself from whence they had received this odd intelligence, especially when I heard them mention the names of several other great generals, as the prince of Hesse, and the king of Sweden, who, they said, were both running away. To which they added, what I entirely agreed with them in, that the crown of France was very weak, but that the mareschal Villars still kept his colours. At last one of them told the company, if they would go along with him, he would shew them a chimney-sweeper and a painted lady in the same bed, which he was sure would very much please them.

What explains this strange conversation?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

In a Word

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

chirurgic
adj. manual; relating to work done by the hand

armillary
adj. consisting of hoops or rings

operosity
n. laboriousness, painstaking endeavour; elaborateness

idoneous
adj. appropriate; fit; suitable; apt

From Hungarian typographer Peter Virágvölgyi, a beautiful instance of “meta-calligraphy.”

| Art · Language

Outwitted

https://archive.org/details/strand-1898-v-16/page/27/mode/2up?view=theater

Two “tricky” animal traps, described in the Strand, July 1898:

Attracted by bait placed on a tree limb, a bear finds its way blocked by a hanging stone and pushes it aside with its paw. “But, alas! the bear has no knowledge of mechanics, and suffers in consequence, for the weight swings back and strikes him heavily.” Angered, the bear strikes the stone a harder blow, and the contest escalates until he’s knocked off the limb.

Below, a python can allegedly be caught by boring a 6-inch hole in the base of a wall and tying up a pig on either side. “The python comes, sees the first pig, and swallows it; then noticing the through the hole that there is another pig on the other side, puts its head through and swallows that also.” Now it’s trapped, unable to advance or retreat.

The author suggests that both of these techniques are used by villagers in India, but doesn’t say where.

(A. Sarathkumar Ghosh, “Tricky Traps,” Strand 16:91 [July 1898], 27-32.)

https://archive.org/details/strand-1898-v-16/page/27/mode/2up?view=theater

| Oddities

Error Count

Edmund Clerihew Bentley invented the clerihew, a distinctive biographical poem in four lines:

Sir Christopher Wren
Said, “I am going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls
Say I am designing St Paul’s.”

For The Complete Clerihews of E. Clerihew Bentley, Bentley compiled an “Index of Psychology, Mentality and Other Things Frequently Noted in Connection With Genius,” so that his readers might explore particular personality traits in the people he wrote about. To the poem above he assigned the following entries:

Atrocity
Bankruptcy, moral
Conduct, disingenuous
Domestic servants, dishonesty among, encouragement of
Escutcheon, blot on, action involving
Fact, cynical perversion of
Guile
Hypocrisy, calculated
Integrity, low standard of
Jesuitry
Knavery
Lie, bouncing circulation of
Machiavelli, unholy precepts of, tendency to act upon
Noblesse Oblige, disregard of apophthegm
Openness, want of
Principle, lack of
Quickening, spiritual, need of
Restoration, lax morality of, readiness to fall in with
Satanism, revolting display of
Turpitude
Untruth, plausible, ability to frame
Veracity, departure from
World, the next, neglect of prospects in
Y.M.C.A., unfitness for
Zion, outcast from

A few more sample poems.

| Literature · Poems

Two Christmas Quizzes

https://www.mscroggs.co.uk/blog/112

This year’s puzzle Christmas card from Chalkdust Magazine, designed by Matthew Scroggs, contains 10 puzzles. Answering them correctly will guide you in completing a Christmas-themed picture. Here’s a printable PDF.

And King William’s College has released its annual general knowledge quiz, which appears as fiendish as ever. (“During 1924, in what could one learn of the ordinariness of Chandrapore?”) MetaFilter is sponsoring a shared Google Sheet where solvers can collaborate; answers will appear on the Guardian website on January 15.

| Puzzles

Pointless

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tabula_-_boardgame_-_Zeno_game.svg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Playing tabula, a forerunner of backgammon, in 480 AD, the Byzantine emperor Zeno made such a stupendously unfortunate dice roll that we still remember it 1500 years later. Playing red in the position above, Zeno rolled a 2, 5, and 6. “As he was unable to move the men on (6) which were blocked by the black men on (8), (11), (12): or the singleton on (9), which was blocked by the black pieces on (11), (14), (15): he was forced to break up his three pairs, a piece from (20) going to (22), one from (19) going to (24), and one from (10) going to (16),” explained R.C. Bell in Board and Table Games From Many Civilizations (1960). “No other moves were possible and he was left with eight singletons and a ruined position.”

See Dice Shaming.

| Entertainment

Advance Billing

When the philosopher Antisthenes was being initiated into the mysteries of Orpheus, and the priest told him that those who vowed themselves to that religion were to receive after death eternal and perfect blessings, he said to him: ‘Why, then, do you not die yourself?’

— Montaigne, Apology for Raymond Sebond, 1576

| Death · Literature · Religion

Pigcasso

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pigcasso_with_painting.jpg

The first nonhuman artist to be given her own art exhibition was a female pig rescued from a South African slaughterhouse in 2016. When her keeper, Joanne Lefson, noticed that the pig ate everything in her stall except some paintbrushes, she taught her to hold a brush in her mouth and apply paint to an easel, and Lefson could sell the resulting works to raise funds for the sanctuary.

Pigcasso’s works have been exhibited in the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, and China. In 2021 German collector Peter Esser paid £20,000 for her painting Wild and Free, a record price for an artwork created by an animal. Altogether the pig’s sales have raised more than $1 million. She died in March 2024, one day before Jane Goodall could arrive to meet her.

| Art · Oddities