Reverses

In one oft-repeated anecdote from the memoirs of Melville Stone, publisher of the Chicago Daily News in the 1870s, the News suspected that the Chicago Post and Mail, published by the McMullen brothers, was pirating its stories. The News retaliated by printing an account of a famine in Serbia, in which the local mayor was quoted as saying (ostensibly in Serbian) ‘Er us siht la Etsll iws nel lum cmeht.’ When the afternoon edition of the Post and Mail duly reproduced the quote, Stone ran to all the other Chicago papers to reveal the hoax: read backward, the supposed quote said ‘The McMullens will steal this sure.’ According to Stone, the Post and Mail never recovered from the embarrassment, and the Daily News was able to buy it for a pittance less than two years later.

— Stuart Banner, American Property: A History of How, Why, and What We Own, 2011

(Thanks, Keith.)

March 14, 2016March 12, 2016 | Hoaxes · Language

Podcast Episode 97: The Villisca Ax Murders

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jingerelle/5180105661 — Image: Flickr

Early one morning in 1912, the residents of Villisca, Iowa, discovered a horrible scene: An entire family had been brutally murdered in their sleep. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll describe the gruesome crime, which has baffled investigators for a hundred years.

We’ll also follow the further adventures of German sea ace Felix von Luckner and puzzle over some fickle bodyguards.

See full show notes …

Dinner Wit

It’s said that when Frederick the Great hosted Voltaire at Sanssouci Palace, he sent him this puzzling note:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederick-rebus.png — Image: Wikimedia Commons

It’s a rebus in French: deux mains sous Pé à cent sous scie? (“two hands under ‘p’ at hundred under saw”) means demain souper à Sanssouci? (“supper tomorrow at Sanssouci?”).

Voltaire replied “Ga!”: Gé grand, A petit! (“big ‘G’, small ‘a’!”) means j’ai grand appétit!, or “I am very hungry!”

March 13, 2016March 12, 2016 | Language · Puzzles

Town and Country

More chess masters reside in New York City than in the rest of the United States combined. We’re planning a chess tournament that all American masters are expected to attend, and we want to minimize the total intercity traveling done by the players. The New York players argue that, by this criterion, the tournament should be held in their city. The West Coast players argue that a city should be chosen near the center of the gravity of the players. Where should we hold the tournament?

	Select Click for Answer
In New York. Label the New York players A₁, A₂, …, A_n, and label all the others B₁, B₂, …, B_m. Because most masters live in New York, n > m. Now let the straight-line distance between two given players, A_i and B_j, be denoted A_iB_j. If we hold the tournament in New York, the total distance traveled, T, will be A₁B₁ + A₂B₂ + … + A_mB_m. But if we hold the tournament elsewhere, then the total distance traveled by each pair A_i and B_i (i = 1, 2, … m) will be at least A_iB_i. Hence the total distance traveled by all the participants will be at least T plus the sum of the distances traveled by the unpaired New York masters A_m+1, A_m+2, …, A_n. (Proposed and solved by Chester McMaster in Pi Mu Epsilon Journal 1:8 [April 1953], 328.)

Click for Answer

March 12, 2016March 20, 2016 | Puzzles

Disappeared

first ladies

There are no known pictures of two American presidents’ wives: Martha Jefferson and Margaret Taylor.

We have one silhouette (left) of Jefferson, who was a little over 5 feet tall and had auburn hair and hazel eyes.

And one 1903 book contains a suggested likeness of Taylor (right), who was described during her life as “a fat, motherly looking woman,” “countenance rather stern but it may be the consequence of military association.”

But no portrait of either woman is known to exist. Some artists have attempted renderings based on pictures of their daughters, whom they were said to resemble, but that’s the best we can do.

March 11, 2016March 11, 2016 | History

Living Large

In his 1984 book Scaling, Duke University physiologist Knut Schmidt-Nielsen points out a pleasing coincidence:

A 30-gram mouse that breathes at a rate of 150 times per minute will breathe about 200 million times during its 3-year life; a 5-ton elephant that breathes at the rate of 6 times per minute will take approximately the same number of breaths during its 40-year lifespan. The heart of the mouse, ticking away at 600 beats per minute, will give the mouse some 800 million heartbeats in its lifetime. The elephant, with its heart beating 30 times per minute, is awarded the same number of heartbeats during its life.

In fact, most mammals have roughly the same number of heartbeats per lifetime, about 10⁹. Small mammals have high metabolic rates and short lives; large ones have low rates and long lives. Humans are lucky: “We live several times as long as our body size suggests we should.”

March 11, 2016March 10, 2016 | Science & Math

In a Word

excogitous
adj. inventive

volitorial
adj. pertaining to flying

empyreuma
n. a burnt smell

Newsreel men recently witnessed an unscheduled drama as flames ended the attempt of Constantinos Vlachos, co-inventor of one of the strangest of flying craft, to win government aid for its development. He had planned an ascent from the lawn of the Congressional Library at Washington, D.C., to demonstrate his ‘triphibian,’ which he claimed could navigate in the air, on land, or in the water. Hardly had he started the motor when fire enveloped the machine. Spectators dashed to his aid and dragged him, severely burned, from the blazing wreck.

— Popular Science, January 1936

(Thanks, Tucker.)

March 10, 2016March 9, 2016 | Language · Technology

Black and White

jewetzky chess problem

By Orest Jewetzky. White to mate in two moves.

	Select Click for Answer
1. Nd2! If Black moves a pawn, then White mates with the knight. If Black captures the bishop, then 2. Qd7 is mate.

March 9, 2016March 20, 2016 | Puzzles

Current Affairs

Is it possible to sail on a river on a windless day? In Why Cats Land on Their Feet (2012), Mark Levi points out that the answer is yes, at least in principle. If the keel is turned broadly against the current, then this will carry the boat downstream, drawing the sail through the still air. Now the roles of the sail and the keel are reversed: The keel catches the motion of the river, acting as a sail, and the boat follows the course established by the sail, which acts as a keel. “It’s just like regular sailing,” Levi writes, “except upside down.”

That’s from the point of view of an observer on shore. In the boat’s reference frame, the water is still and a wind is blowing upstream. From this perspective the boat is sailing conventionally — the sail is catching the wind and the keel slices through the water.

“This is a neat symmetry,” Levi notes. “The sail and the keel exchange roles, depending on your reference frame! So the sail and the keel have completely equal rights in that respect.”

March 9, 2016March 8, 2016 | Science & Math

Unquote

“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.” — Marcus Aurelius

“When anger rises, think of the consequences.” — Confucius

“Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.” — Benjamin Franklin

March 8, 2016March 7, 2016 | Quotations