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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

An Unanswered Question

One of the most beautiful and moving of the bird-songs heard throughout the country which [French merchant Nicolas] Denys governed [in 17th-century Acadia], is that of the Veery, or Wilson’s Thrush. The Maliseet Indians of the Saint John River, as Mr. Tappan Adney has recently told us, say this bird is calling Ta-né-li-ain′, Ni-kó-la Dĕn′-i Dĕn′-i?, that is, ‘Where are you going, Nicolas Denys?’ and Mr. Adney thinks this an actual echo from the days of our author.

— From William Francis Ganong’s 1908 introduction to Denys’ Description and Natural History of the Coasts of North America, 1672

| History · Science & Math

In Other News

Peterborough Standard misprint

From the Peterborough Standard, 1979:

CROWLAND’S Silver Jubilee committee was finally wound up on Thursday evening with a presentation ceremony at the library.

The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Parnell as ‘one of the finest efforts in Lincolnshire’, fremony at the library.

The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Parnell as ‘one remony atremony aremony at the library.

The jubremony at the library.

Tremony at remony at the library.

Thrremony at tremony at the liremony at the libraremony at the library.

Theremony at the library.

The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Premony rremony at the liremony aremony at the libremony atremony at the tremony at the library.

Tremorremony at the library remony at the library.

The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Parnell as ‘one of the finest efforts in Lincolnshire’, fn he latched onto a through ball. Although he was hauled down by the ‘keeper he still managed to stroke the ball home.

But for the second week running Durant had to leave the field injured, this time suffering eye trouble.

The winning goal was another 25-yard shot — again from Blackstones’ central defender — coming from their second chance of the game.

Gary Cooper, recently signed from Queens Old Boys, had a good debut.

12/06/2024 UPDATE: Reader Alan Mandel recalls this article from the Santa Ana (Calif.) Register, noted in the New Yorker on Nov. 17, 1980:

LONDON (AP) — The Soviet Union has welded a massive naval force ‘far beyond the needs of defence of the Soviet sea frontiers,’ and is beefing up its armada with a powerful new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and two giant battle cruisers, the authorative ‘Jane’s Fighting Ships’ reported Thursday.

‘The Soviet navy at the start of the 1980s is truly a formidable force,’ said the usually-truly is a unique formidable is too smoothy as the usually are lenience on truly a formidable Thursday’s naives is frames analysis of the world’s annual reference work, said the first frames of the worlds’ navies in its 1980-81 edition.

‘The Soviet navy at the start usually-repair-led Capt. John Moore, a retired British Royal News Services.

‘The Soviet navy as the navy of the struggle started,’ she reportable Thursday.

‘The Soviet navy at the start of the 1980s is truly a formidable force,’ said beef carry on the adults of defense block identical analysis 1980s is truly formidable force, said the usually-reliable of the 1980s is unusually reliable, lake his off the world’s reported Thursday.

(Thanks, Alan.)

| Language · Oddities