My Aunt Maria asked me to read the life of Dr. Chalmers, which, however, I did not promise to do. Yesterday, Sunday, she was heard through the partition shouting to my Aunt Jane, who is deaf, ‘Think of it! He stood half an hour today to hear the frogs croak, and he wouldn’t read the life of Chalmers.’
— Thoreau, journal, March 28, 1853
Donald Aucamp offered this problem in the Puzzle Corner department of MIT Technology Review in October 2003. Three logicians, A, B, and C, are wearing hats. Each of them knows that a positive integer has been painted on each of the hats, and each of them can see her companions’ integers but not her own. They also know that one of the integers is the sum of the other two. Now they engage in a contest to see which can be the first to determine her own number. A goes first, then B, then C, and so on in a circle until someone correctly names her number. In the first round, all three of them pass, but in the second round A correctly announces that her number is 50. How did she know this, and what were the other numbers?
“Garçon!” the diner was chargin’,
“My butter has been writ large in!”
“But I had to write there,”
Exclaimed waiter Pierre,
“I didn’t have room in the margarine.”
(Thanks, Larry.)
A pretty dissection puzzle by Sam Loyd. Cut this figure into three pieces that will fit together to make a square.
Speaking of swans: By royal prerogative, all mute swans in open water in Britain are the property of the British Crown. Historically the Crown shares ownership with two livery companies, the Worshipful Company of Vintners and the Worshipful Company of Dyers, and so, accordingly, each year in the third week of July three skiffs make their way up the Thames from Sunbury to Abingdon, catching, tagging, and releasing the swans they encounter. Nominally they’re apportioning the birds among themselves; in practice they’re counting them and checking their health.
Magnificently, the Crown’s swans are recorded by the Marker of the Swans, a recognized official in the Royal Household since this tradition began in the 12th century. Queen Elizabeth II attended the Swan Upping ceremony in 2009, as “Seigneur of the Swans,” the first time a reigning monarch had done so. The entire operation was shut down for the first time in 2020, due to COVID-19, but it commenced again the following year.
While we’re at it: All whales and sturgeons caught in Britain become the personal property of the monarch — they are “royal fish.” Plan accordingly.
(Thanks, Nick.)
Some say “If God sees everything before
It happens — and deceived He cannot be —
Then everything must happen, though you swore
The contrary, for He has seen it, He.”
And so I say, if from eternity
God has foreknowledge of our thought and deed,
We’ve no free choice, whatever books we read.
— Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde
Star Trek costume designer William Ware Theiss offered the Theiss Theory of Titillation: “The degree to which a costume is considered sexy is directly proportional to how accident-prone it appears to be.”
(Thanks, Michael.)
From Henry Dudeney:
Take an ordinary pack of playing cards and regard all the court cards as tens. Now, look at the top card — say it is a seven — place it on the table face downwards and play more cards on top of it, counting up to twelve. Thus, the bottom card being seven, the next will be eight, the next nine, and so on, making six cards in that pile. Then look again at the top card of the pack — say it is a queen — then count 10, 11, 12 (three cards in all), and complete the second pile. Continue this, always counting up to twelve, and if at last you have not sufficient cards to complete a pile, put these apart. Now, if I am told how many piles have been made and how many unused cards remain over, I can at once tell you the sum of all the bottom cards in the piles. I simply multiply by 13 the number of piles less 4, and add the number of cards left over. Thus, if there were 6 piles and 5 cards over, then 13 times 2 (i.e. 6 less 4) added to 5 equals 31, the sum of the bottom cards. Why is this?
The 1672 painting Easel With Still Life of Fruit, by the Flemish painter Cornelius Gijsbrechts, is a sort of apotheosis of trompe-l’œil: The whole thing — not just the still life itself but the easel, all the tools, the other pictures, and the letter — have been painted on a wooden cutout; it’s all an illusion.
The painting at the bottom has no front — only its reverse is visible. Gijsbrechts had played that joke before.
In a democracy, a voter might reasonably choose to vote in their own interests or to vote for their idea of the common good. This divergence can spell trouble. Suppose voters are choosing between two options, A and B. A is in the interests of 40 percent of the electorate, and B is in the interests of the remaining 60 percent. Now suppose that 80 percent of voters believe that B is for the common good, and 20 percent believe that A is for the common good. And suppose that these beliefs are independent of interests — that is, believers in A and believers in B are spread evenly through the electorate. Finally, suppose that voters for whom A is in their interests vote according to interest while voters for whom B is in their interests vote according to their idea of the common good.
The result is that 52 percent of voters (all A-interest voters and 20 percent of B-interest voters) will vote for A, which wins the day, “even though it is in the minority interest, and believed by just 20% of the population to be in the common good,” notes philosopher Jonathan Wolff. The scenario in this example may be unlikely, but “the key assumption is that morally motivated individuals can make a mistake about what morality requires. … [W]e cannot rely on any assurances that democratic decision-making reveals either the majority interest or the common good.”
(Jonathan Wolff, “Democratic Voting and the Mixed-Motivation Problem,” Analysis 54:4 [October 1994], 193-196.)
