The Battle of Surfaces

In 2007 Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were ranked 1 and 2 among the world’s men’s singles tennis players. But they excelled on different surfaces: Federer had not lost a match in five years on grass courts, and Nadal had been undefeated on clay for three. And neither player had defeated the other on his favored surface. So they held an exhibition match on a special court that was half grass, half clay.

The court took 19 days and $1.63 million to create. Before the match, Federer said:

We are both looking forward to this absolutely new event. The idea really appeals to me, as we both dominate one of the surfaces. Rafa holds the record of 72 victories in series on clay, and I have not been defeated on grass since 48 matches. It’ll be fun to find out what it’s like to play on a court with mixed surfaces! And it ought to be interesting to see who chooses the better tactic. People have been talking about this event for quite a while. Now it’s coming up pretty soon already, and I like the fact that the stadium — which is very nice, by the way — is located on Majorca, Rafa’s home. He has been to Basel, after all, and now I’ve got the opportunity to play at his place for once.

Nadal won 7–5, 4–6, 7–6(12–10). “It has been a nice experience,” he told the BBC, “although before the match I thought it would be a disaster because I felt it would be very difficult for me to adapt to the court. I have had a good time and that is important.”

July 29, 2017 | Entertainment · Oddities

Unquote

black cat

“Superstition would seem to be simply cowardice in regard to the supernatural.” — Theophrastus

July 28, 2017July 28, 2017 | Quotations

Dressed for Work

Parisian engraver Nicolas de Larmessin’s 1695 Fantastic Costumes of Trades & Professions presents workers clothed in the objects of their calling:

larmessin pyrotechnician — Pyrotechnician

Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.”

July 28, 2017 | Art

Unlimited Shuffleboard

Jules Verne’s 1895 novel Propeller Island imagines an immense ship in the Pacific Ocean that’s inhabited entirely by millionaires. In 1999 an organization calling itself Freedom Ship International proposed the real thing, a ship four times as long as the Queen Mary and 25 stories tall. Altogether the ship would boast 18,000 living units, 3,000 commercial units, 2,400 time-share units and 10,000 hotel units, and like Verne’s ship it would circle the world continuously.

“The proposed vessel’s superstructure, rising twenty-five stories above its broad main deck, would house residential space, a library, schools, and a first-class hospital in addition to retail and wholesale shops, banks, hotels, restaurants, entertainment facilities, casinos, offices, warehouses, and light manufacturing and assembly enterprises.”

Cost estimates started at $6 billion but soon nearly doubled, and construction still hasn’t begun, though the company was actively pursuing its plans as recently as November 2013. While you’re waiting, you can stay on this giant yacht.

July 27, 2017 | Oddities

Math Notes

(1⁵ + 2⁵) + (1⁷ + 2⁷) = 2 (1 + 2)⁴

(1⁵ + 2⁵ + 3⁵) + (1⁷ + 2⁷ + 3⁷) = 2 (1 + 2 + 3)⁴

(1⁵ + 2⁵ + 3⁵ + 4⁵) + (1⁷ + 2⁷ + 3⁷ + 4⁷) = 2 (1 + 2 + 3 + 4)⁴

(1⁵ + 2⁵ + 3⁵ + 4⁵ + 5⁵) + (1⁷ + 2⁷ + 3⁷ + 4⁷ + 5⁷) = 2 (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5)⁴

…

July 27, 2017July 26, 2017 | Science & Math

Life Size

Human-scale chess has been played for centuries — the Italian town of Marostica has staged a game every two years since 1923, and the photo above shows actual soldiers (and cannon!) in a game in St. Petersburg in 1924.

In 2003 Sharilyn Neidhardt organized a game on a board represented by 64 city blocks on the Lower East Side of New York. Two expert players played the game on an ordinary board at the ABC No Rio gallery, in the middle of the street grid. Each time one of them made a move, the corresponding piece received a call or a text message (“go to f7”) and had to travel to the corresponding square, on foot or by bike or roller skate. If you were captured you became an ordinary person again.

Players were recruited online; each had to have a working cell phone, “be excruciatingly on time,” and be willing to spend about three hours awaiting orders. Neidhardt warned newcomers: center pawns can expect to be captured early, bishops and knights will cover a lot of territory, and kings will have a low-key opening and a busy endgame.

As of 2014, eight games had been played, in New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, and Austin. Here’s a knight’s diary of the New York game.

(From Karen O’Rourke, Walking and Mapping, 2013.)

July 26, 2017 | Art · Entertainment

Travel Planning

In 1794 a penurious Sydney Smith accepted an offer to spend the holidays with some friends in Gloucestershire.

“Your offer of a horse to carry my portmanteau I cannot accept, and for two reasons, which I think will justify me in not accepting it,” he wrote. “The first is, you have no horse here; the next, I have no portmanteau.”

July 26, 2017July 25, 2017 | Literature

The Angel Problem

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Angel_problem.svg — Image: Wikimedia Commons

An angel stands on an infinite chessboard. On each turn she can move at most 3 king’s moves from her current position. Play then passes to a devil, who can eat any square on the board. The angel can’t land on an eaten square, but she can fly over it, as angels have wings. (In the diagram above, the angel starts at the origin of the grid and, since she’s limited to 3 king’s moves, can’t pass beyond the blue dotted boundary on her next turn.)

The devil wins if he can strand the angel by surrounding her with a “moat” 3 squares wide. The angel wins if she can continue to move forever. Who will succeed?

John Conway, who posed this question in 1982, offered $100 for a winning strategy for an angel of sufficiently high “power” (3 moves may not be enough; in fact a 1-power angel, an actual chess king, will lose). He also offered $1000 for a strategy that will enable a devil to win against an angel of any power.

It’s not immediately clear what strategy can save the angel. If she simply flees from nearby eaten squares, the devil can build a giant horseshoe and drive her into it. If she sprints in a single direction, the devil can build an impenetrable wall to stop her.

In fact it wasn’t until 2006 that András Máthé and Oddvar Kloster both showed that the angel has a winning strategy. In some variants, in higher dimensions, it’s still not certain she can survive.

(John H. Conway, “The Angel Problem,” in Richard J. Nowakowski, ed., Games of No Chance, 1996.)

July 25, 2017 | Science & Math

While You Wait

Old Faithful is sometimes degraded by being made a laundry. Garments placed in the crater during quiescence are ejected thoroughly washed when the eruption takes place. Gen. Sheridan’s men, in 1882, found that linen and cotton fabrics were uninjured by the action of the water, but woolen clothes were torn to shreds.

— William C. Riley, Official Guide to the Yellowstone National Park, 1889

July 25, 2017July 24, 2017 | Oddities · Technology