Rhymes for unrhymable words, by Willard R. Espy:
Month
It is unth-
inkable to find
A rhyme for month
Except this special kind.
Orange
The four eng-
ineers
Wore orange
Brassieres.
Oblige
Love’s lost its glow?
No need to lie; j-
ust tell me “Go!”
And I’ll oblige.
A striking scene from the coast of Massachusetts, summer 1894:
I was brought, from my sitting posture, down on the flat of my back. The force produced a motor disturbance of my head and jaws. My mouth made automatic movements; till, in a few seconds, I was distinctly conscious of another’s voice — unearthly, awful, loud, and weird — bursting through the woodland from my own lips, with the despairing words: ‘Oh! My People!’
The victim, Albert Le Baron, had for some time found himself talking involuntarily in a language he didn’t understand, a language he believed had some ancient or remote origin. He became convinced that he was conveying the words of dead speakers. That September, back in New York City, he received a similar communication from the “psycho-automatism,” with a translation:
I have seen all thy ways, O son of the Nile! I have heard all thy songs, O son of the Nile! I have listened to all thy woes, O son of the Nile! I have been with thee, O son of the Nile! I have been near thee when thy days were full of glory. I have been near thee when thy days were covered in sadness. I have heard thy voice, O son of Egypt! I have counted thy tears, O son of Egypt! I have heard thy voice of wailing, O son of Egypt! I have watched thee when thy men of might have flown; I have watched thee when thy glory has faded; I have watched thee when thy sun has set; I have watched thee, O son of the Nile! Thy tears have been my tears; thy joys have been my joys; thy woes have been my woes. O son of the Nile, I love thee! O son of the Nile, I love thee!
William James, who communicated all this to the Society for Psychical Research, wasn’t impressed. “I know no stronger example of the subjective sense of genius, or rather of positive inspiration, accompanying a subliminal uprush of absolutely meaningless matter,” he wrote. The whole article is here.
(Albert LeBaron, “A Case of Psychic Automatism, Including ‘Speaking With Tongues,'” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 12 [1896-1897], 277-297.)
On Aug. 7, 1905, magician David Devant premiered an effect that had occurred to him in a dream: A woman appears to vanish instantaneously from a bare stage.
Devant left behind a description of only 310 words explaining how he’d accomplished the illusion. He called it “the best I have ever done.” The lady descends into the floor, leaving behind the dress, supported by a tube covered with black velvet. The dress is pumped full of oil fog, and at the critical instant it’s whisked down through the tube, leaving (apparently) nothing but smoke hanging in the air.
The brief, blurry advertisement above, for Doug Henning’s 1983 Broadway musical Merlin, appears to be the only video online of this illusion. That’s a shame; it would be wonderful to see it more clearly. Devant’s partner John Nevil Maskelyne called it the “trickiest trick he had ever seen.”
Shopping at a mall one afternoon, Dave Morice and his son Danny came across a set of poseable wrestling action figures. One accessory was a breakaway table that came in two jagged halves. The store had a policy that allowed customers to return a broken toy for one that wasn’t broken.
Morice said, “Now here’s a problem. The table comes broken in two. If it wasn’t broken, then it would be broken. In either case, it’s broken.”
Danny said, “Yeah! That means we can take it back any time for a brand-new one.”
“That’s another problem,” Morice said. “They couldn’t replace it with one that wasn’t broken.”
(From Word Ways.)
All new ventures have their detractors, and James had his full share with the Cavendish project. One diminishing but still powerful school of critics held that, while experiments were necessary in research, they brought no benefit to teaching. A typical member was Isaac Todhunter, the celebrated mathematical tutor, who argued that the only evidence a student needed of a scientific truth was the word of his teacher, who was ‘probably a clergyman of mature knowledge, recognised ability, and blameless character’. One afternoon James bumped into Todhunter on King’s Parade and invited him to pop into the Cavendish to see a demonstration of conical refraction. Horrified, Todhunter replied: ‘No, I have been teaching it all my life and don’t want my ideas upset by seeing it now!’
— Basil Mahon, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, 2004
The job of creating voices for Munchkins and Winkies in The Wizard of Oz fell to vocal arranger Ken Darby. “In those days we didn’t have the technical facilities we have now, like speeding up tape,” he said. “I had to figure out how to make the Munchkins sound high-pitched”:
I worked it out mathematically, using a metronome. Then I went to the head of the sound department, Doug Shearer. I told him that if we could record at sixty feet per minute instead of the normal ninety feet per minute and if we sang at a slower pace in a different key, when we played it back at ninety it should sound right. He said there was no way to do that because we didn’t have a variable-speed recorder. Then he said he would try to manufacture a new gear for the sound-recording machine. And it worked. I had the singers sing very slowly and distinctly so the words would be clear when we played it back at a faster speed. Ding … Dong … the … witch … is … dead. When we played it back, it was a perfect one-fourth higher.
“None of the midgets did any of the singing. None of them could carry a tune.”
(From Aljean Harmetz, The Making of The Wizard of Oz, 1977.)
This verse is known as “Lord Macaulay’s Last Riddle.” Lord Macaulay was Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), though his authorship of the riddle is uncertain. What’s the answer?
Let us look at it quite closely,
‘Tis a very ugly word,
And one that makes one shudder
Whenever it is heard.
It mayn’t be very wicked;
It must be always bad,
And speaks of sin and suffering
Enough to make one mad.
They say it is a compound word,
And that is very true;
And then they decompose it,
Which, of course, they’re free to do.
If, of the dozen letters
We take off the first three,
We have the nine remaining
As sad as they can be;
For, though it seems to make it less,
In fact it makes it more,
For it takes the brute creation in,
Which was left out before.
Let’s see if we can mend it —
It’s possible we may,
If only we divide it
In some new-fashioned way.
Instead of three and nine, then,
Let’s make it four and eight;
You’ll say it makes no difference,
At least not very great;
But only see the consequence!
That’s all that need be done
To change this mass of sadness
To unmitigated fun.
It clears off swords and pistols
Revolvers, bowie-knives,
And all the horrid weapons
By which men lose their lives;
It wakens holier voices —
And now joyfully is heard
The native sound of gladness
Compressed into one word!
Yes! Four and eight, my friends!
Let that be yours and mine,
Though all the hosts of demons
Rejoice in three and nine.
James Mayfield gives this clever expression in the August 2006 issue of Word Ways:
BEAR + RARE + ERE = RHYME
It’s an alphametic: If each letter is taken to represent a different digit, it encodes a valid equation. What’s the equation?
In 1830 Joseph Palmer created an odd controversy in Fitchburg, Massachusetts: He wore a beard when beards were out of fashion. For this social sin he was shunned, attacked, and ultimately jailed. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll tell the story of a bizarre battle against irrational prejudice.
We’ll also see whether a computer can understand knitting and puzzle over an unrewarded long jump.
In 1904 a Manhattan church outing descended into horror when a passenger steamboat caught fire on the East River. More than a thousand people struggled to survive as the captain raced to reach land. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll describe the burning of the General Slocum, the worst maritime disaster in the history of New York City.
We’ll also chase some marathon cheaters and puzzle over a confusing speeding ticket.