- SWEET-TOOTHED has three consecutive pairs of letters. SUBBOOKKEEPER has four.
- Will you answer this question negatively?
- 4624 = 44 + 46 + 42 + 44
- The telephone number 278-7433 spells both ASTRIDE and CRUSHED.
- “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” — Emerson
The Just Judges
The Ghent altarpiece is 20-panel allegorical polyptych by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, a masterpiece of 15th-century art.
In April 1934, a thief stole the lower left panel and demanded a ransom of 1 million Belgian francs.
Seven months later, Flemish broker Arsène Goedertier collapsed after a speech at a political rally. He managed to say that he knew where the stolen panel was hidden, but he died before he could communicate the secret.
In Goedertier’s home police found abundant evidence that he had sent the ransom note, but there was no sign of the missing panel, only a record that it was “in a place where neither I nor anyone else can recover it without drawing attention.”
It remains missing to this day.
Even Steven
A Scholar traveyling, and having noe money, call’d at an Alehouse, and ask’d for a penny loafe, then gave his hostesse it againe, for a pot of ale; and having drunke it of, was going away. The woman demanded a penny of him. For what? saies he. Shee answers, for ye ale. Quoth hee, I gave you ye loafe for it. Then, said she, pay for ye loafe. Quoth hee, had you it not againe? which put ye woman to a non plus, that ye scholar went free away.
— John Ashton, Humour, Wit, & Satire of the Seventeenth Century, 1883
Swing Time
Jazz pianist Billy Tipton was biologically female. She lived as a man from age 19 to her death at 74, when the truth was discovered.
Born in 1914, Dorothy Tipton developed an early love of jazz, but sexism in the music industry and the straitened economy of the Depression made it impossible to find work. In 1933 she donned trousers and her father’s nickname and began playing in Oklahoma bars.
By the 1940s she was touring the country, and in the 1950s the Billy Tipton Trio released two albums for Tops Records and performed with Duke Ellington, Patti Page, and Rosemary Clooney. Arthritis finally forced Billy’s retirement in the 1970s.
Throughout all this Tipton had relationships with at least five women, including nightclub dancer Kitty Kelly, with whom she raised three adopted sons. She bound her chest, ostensibly to protect ribs fractured in an auto accident, and she always locked the bathroom door. Son William learned of his father’s sex only when a paramedic working on the dying Tipton asked, “Son, did your father have a sex change?”
Why keep a secret for 55 years? Tipton left no account of her reasons, and perhaps it’s none of our business. “I can’t say that passion wasn’t there with Billy, because it was,” said former lover Betty Cox, who insisted she never suspected Billy’s sex even during intimacy. “Now, 40 or 50 years later, you see these cross-dressers all the time on TV. You can certainly tell. Even on TV. I can look at a person and say, ‘Gee, that’s obviously a woman.’ Why couldn’t I then?”
Trial by Fire
You are grilling steaks for Genghis Khan. Your little grill can broil two steaks at a time, but Genghis is hungry and wants three. That’s a problem: It takes 4 minutes to grill each side of a steak, so you’ll spend 8 minutes grilling the first two steaks, then another 8 grilling the third. Sixteen minutes is a long time to keep a warlord waiting.
How can you improve your time while still cooking the steaks thoroughly? Genghis really likes his well done.
Don’t Call Us
When Sinclair Lewis won the Nobel Prize in 1930, he began to receive fan mail. One young woman proposed becoming his secretary. “I’ll do everything for you,” she wrote. “And when I say everything, I mean everything.”
Lewis’ wife, Dorothy, saw the letter and responded. “My dear Miss,” she wrote. “My husband already has a stenographer who handles his work for him. And, as for ‘everything,’ I take care of that myself — and when I say everything, I mean everything.”
Point of Interest
A few miles to the northeast of Woodstock lies the village of Saugerties, and just before entering it, Routes 212 and 32 come together. We do not know who first gave this juncture the name of Fahrenheit Corners, but as a large IBM plant is in the vicinity, we may reasonably suspect one of its more whimsical employees.
— Journal of Recreational Mathematics, October 1981
Undercover
“The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident.” — Charles Lamb
“The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.” — Thomas Carlyle
“Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.” — Alexander Pope
Slap Happy
In 1994, inventor Albert Cohen saw a peculiar opportunity:
During a televised sporting event, a ‘high five’ is commonly shared between fans to express the joy and excitement of a touchdown, home run, game-winning basket, birdie or other positive occurrence. Unfortunately, as known in the art, a ‘high five’ requires the mutual hand slapping of two participants, wherein a first participant slaps an upraised hand against the elevated hand of a second participant. As such, a solitary fan is unable to perform a ‘high five’ to express excitement during a televised sporting event.
His “apparatus for simulating a high five” can be mounted on a table, wall, or floor — and it even promotes physical fitness: “When the hand-arm configuration is mounted at a sufficient height above the normal reach of a user, the user must jump upwards to strike the simulated hand, thereby simulating many of the jumping drills commonly practiced by basketball players. As such, the leg strength and coordination of a user may be improved through the practice of the present invention.”
The Great West
But Miss Cooper, the daughter of the novelist, tells a story which is well-nigh incredible. When in Paris, she saw a French translation of ‘The Spy,’ in which a man is represented as tying his horse to a locust. Not understanding that the locust-tree was meant, the intelligent Frenchman translated the word as ‘sauterelle,’ and, feeling that some explanation was due, he gravely explained in a note that grasshoppers grew to an enormous size in America, and that one of them, dead and stuffed, was placed at the door of the mansion for the convenience of visitors on horseback.
— William Shepard Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892