From the Fall 1983 issue of Pi Mu Epsilon Journal, a wordless proof by Purdue University freshman Hao-Nhen Qua. Vu:
Search Results for: in a word
Charlie’s Birthday
A puzzle by National Security Agency mathematician Stephen C., from the agency’s July 2015 Puzzle Periodical:
Charlie presents a list of 14 possible dates for his birthday to Albert, Bernard, and Cheryl.
- Apr 14, 1999
- Feb 19, 2000
- Mar 14, 2000
- Mar 15, 2000
- Apr 16, 2000
- Apr 15, 2000
- Feb 15, 2001
- Mar 15, 2001
- Apr 14, 2001
- Apr 16, 2001
- May 14, 2001
- May 16, 2001
- May 17, 2001
- Feb 17, 2002
He then announces that he is going to tell Albert the month, Bernard the day, and Cheryl the year.
After he tells them, Albert says, “I don’t know Charlie’s birthday, but neither does Bernard.”
Bernard then says, “That is true, but Cheryl also does not know Charlie’s birthday.”
Cheryl says, “Yes, and Albert still has not figured out Charlie’s birthday.”
Bernard then replies, “Well, now I know his birthday.”
At this point, Albert says, “Yes, we all know it now.”
What is Charlie’s birthday?
“The Worst of All Puns”
At Nuremburg a wolf’s tooth was shown to travellers … on which an Abbé is represented lying dead in a meadow, with three lilies growing out of his posteriors. This is not only the worst pun that ever was carved upon a wolf’s tooth, but the worst that ever was or will be made. The Abbé is designed to express the Latin word Habe. He is lying dead in a meadow, … mort en pré; this is for mortem præ; and the three lilies in his posteriors are to be read oculis, … au cu lis. Thus, according to the annexed explanation, the whole pun, rebus, or hieroglyphic, is Habe mortem præ oculis.
— Robert Southey, Omniana, 1812
In other words, the French phrase Abbé mort en pré au cul lys (“Abbot died in a meadow with lilies in his rump”) sounds like the Latin phrase Habe mortem præ oculis (“Keep death before your eyes”). This joke appears to be referenced in Hieronymus Bosch’s 1504 triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights:
Decalogue
Jonathan Franzen’s “10 rules for novelists”:
- The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.
- Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money.
- Never use the word then as a conjunction — we have and for this purpose. Substituting then is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solution to the problem of too many ands on the page.
- Write in third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.
- When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.
- The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than The Metamorphosis.
- You see more sitting still than chasing after.
- It’s doubtful that anyone with an Internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.
- Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.
- You have to love before you can be relentless.
(From The End of the End of the Earth: Essays, 2018.)
Succinct
Travelling to England with his wife and daughter in the Norwegian freighter Halibut, which ran into rough seas, [Sir Robert Menzies] sent this cable to relatives:
At sea off Perth: Exodus X, 23.
In the Bible they found these words:
They saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days.
— Ray Robinson, ed., The Wit of Sir Robert Menzies, 1966
Viewpoints
Jeremy Bentham made a table of the springs of action, where every human desire was named in three parallel columns, according as men wish to praise it, to blame it, or to treat it neutrally. Thus we find in one column ‘gluttony,’ and opposite it, in the next column, ‘love of the pleasures of the social board.’ And again, we find in the column giving eulogistic names to impulses, ‘public spirit,’ and opposite to it, in the next column, we find ‘spite.’ I recommend anybody who wishes to think clearly on any ethical topic to imitate Bentham in this particular, and after accustoming himself to the fact that almost every word conveying blame has a synonym conveying praise, to acquire a habit of using words that convey neither praise nor blame.
— Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals, 1929
Bentham had published the table in 1817. “By habit,” he wrote, “wherever a man sees a name, he is led to figure to himself a corresponding object, of the reality of which the name is accepted by him, as it were of course, in the character of a certificate. From this delusion, endless is the confusion, the error, the dissension, the hostility, that has been derived.”
Hot Woe!
A conversation in Spoonerian, a language conducted entirely in spoonerisms, proposed by J.A. Lindon:
A: Hot woe, Barley Chinks!
B: Hot woe, Chilly Base!
A: Blocking showy, Miss Thorning.
B: Glowing a bale.
A: It slacked one of my crates.
B: I’ve a late slacking. The drain rips in.
A: Porter on the willows? Tut-tut!
B: Mad for the bite. Cuddles on the pot.
A: A very washy splinter.
B: All blood and mowing.
A: Here’s to spray in the Ming!
B: Sadsome glummer! ‘Ware fell!
A: Low song!
A Late Edit
The screenplay for the 1962 war film The Longest Day was composed by an international team of writers to reflect the various nationalities that appear in the film. James Jones, who handled the Americans, had finished his work and was vacationing in Yugoslavia when producer Darryl Zanuck sent an urgent wire asking him to correct a small piece of late dialogue. “How much for it?” Jones asked. Zanuck answered “Fifteen thousand dollars.” Jones wrote, “Okay, shoot.”
The line, which had been written by an Englishman, was “I can’t eat that bloody old box of tunny fish.”
Jones changed this to “I can’t stand this damned old tuna fish.”
In The Literary Life and Other Curiosities, Robert Hendrickson calls this the highest word rate ever paid to a professional author. “The chore of deleting two words and changing four words came to $2,500 a word.”
Efficiency
Just a bit of trivia: In the New South Wales railway system, the telegraph code RYZY meant:
Vehicle No ….. may be worked forward to ….. behind the brakevan of a suitable goods train during daylight provided locomotive branch certifies fit to travel. If the damaged vehicle is fitted with automatic coupling it must only be worked forward behind a brakevan also fitted with automatic coupling by connecting the automatic couplers on each vehicle but, if fitted with ordinary drawgear, it must be screw coupled. Westinghouse brake to be in use throughout train and on damaged vehicle. Guard to be given written instructions to carefully watch vehicle en route.
This reduced a 90-word message to four letters.
“WIPEOUT!”
Cynthia Knight composed this in 1983 — a poem typed entirely on the upper row of a typewriter:
O WOE
(we quote you, poor poet)
We tiptoe up, quiet. You peer out. You opt to write
quite proper poetry
to pour out your pretty repertoire.
We try to woo you to write. You pop out; retire to pout.
Torpor? Terror? Ire? Or worry? We pity you, poor poet.
Put out, you rip your poetry up. Too trite?
We try to pique you.
Were your pep to tire, or your power to rot
We prop you up to retype it.
Or were our top priority to trip you
or were etiquette, piety, or propriety to require you to wire up your typewriter to rewrite it …
O! You write witty quip, pert retort. You titter. You write pure, utter tripe too, I purr.
You err
retype your error
weep
wipe your wet typewriter (your property)
We TOWER o’er you, wee tot — were you TWO?
YOU WORE YOUR TOY TYPEWRITER OUT!
We quit.
(“The Poet’s Corner,” Word Ways 16:2 [May 1983], 87-88.)